newyorker--2020-09-18--“Kajillionaire” Challenges Miranda July’s Aptitude for Whimsy

When it comes to freaky families , whom do you think of first ?
The Munsters , the Addamses , the Borgias , the Romanovs , the Tenenbaums , or the Trumps ?
How about the House of Atreus ?
The list is a distinguished one , and it ’ s blessed by the arrival of a new bunch , in Miranda July ’ s “ Kajillionaire.
” Say hello to the Dynes , who number precisely three : Robert ( Richard Jenkins ) , his wife , Theresa ( Debra Winger ) , and their daughter , Old Dolio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is twenty-six .
They may lack imperial trappings , and their wealth , as yet , is not the stuff of legend .
In the noble art of clipping coupons , however , or of collecting the half-eaten snacks that other passengers have left behind on airplanes , the Dynes are unsurpassed .
They live in Los Angeles , which is something of a joke , since they don ’ t have a car .
Or , for that matter , a home .
Their current dwelling is a bubble factory , if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the office floor .
Clouds of pink foam keep frothing through cracks at the top of the wall and creeping downward—a silly , non-scary version of the blood that surges in from the elevator ’ s edge in “ The Shining ” ( 1980 ) .
Needless to say , the Dynes are behind on rent ; the building manager looks terribly upset about it , though his tears are involuntary .
“ I have no filters , ” he says .
In a bid to elude him , the family goes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , bending down or , in the case of Old Dolio , leaning perilously backward , like a limbo dancer .
Filmed from the side , in a travelling shot , they look like an experimental-ballet troupe .
Fans of July , who directed “ Me and You and Everyone We Know ” ( 2005 ) and “ The Future ” ( 2011 ) , will be cool with this level of weirdness , because she herself is forever medium cool .
The foibles of her characters require no explanation , and we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Dynes .
Did they once have money , a place of their own , and steady jobs , and then lose everything , or is dispossession their natural state ?
Either way , they now subsist on scavenging and scams ; the movie kicks off with a heist , as Old Dolio—who , like her mother , has a long and listless curtain of hair—enters a post office in a series of leaps and rolls .
She looks like a hippie commando .
Once inside , she filches packages from other people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to selling the contents or claiming a refund .
As crime goes , it lacks a little pizzazz .
Imagine the hoodlums in “ Heat ” ( 1995 ) storming a bank and coming away with a necktie .
While you ’ re wondering how long the rest of the movie can , or should , noodle along in this kooky fashion , up springs a plot .
A young woman , Melanie ( Gina Rodriguez ) , makes the family ’ s acquaintance and , bringing along a bright idea for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ turbid days .
In particular , she befriends Old Dolio—who was named , apparently , for a lottery-winning homeless man , in the hope that he might offer her a legacy .
( No luck . )
There ’ s a lovely scene in which the two women visit a supermarket , with Old Dolio pointing out the aisles where , thanks to a security-camera blind spot , shoplifting would be a steal .
Melanie ’ s plan is bolder still : she ’ s going to pay for what ’ s in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The movie needs Rodriguez , whose demeanor , upbeat and no-nonsense , interrupts the lilt of eccentricity that prevails elsewhere .
Whereas Old Dolio ’ s voice is a low and halting drone , all too fitting for someone so woefully unsocialized , Melanie delivers her lines with a snap and a smile .
Yet even she has her secrets .
Having told the Dynes that she ’ s an assistant to an ophthalmologist at Cedars-Sinai , she later admits to working for a regular optician , selling bifocals to the aged .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but it bolsters our impression that July ’ s characters are not so much being themselves as playing themselves , so to speak , and continually tweaking who they wish to be .
Hence the unnerving ease with which , after sneaking into the house of a sick and elderly man ( “ He ’ s trying to die , ” Old Dolio reports ) , they settle in at their leisure .
Theresa dons an apron and serves cake ; Robert watches golf on TV .
“ I think I will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ announces .
They could get used to this existence .
Millions of folks do .
No one seeks out a movie like this in search of rage , let alone political heft , yet there are stirrings of disquiet—if not of outright protest—as Melanie urges Old Dolio to step back , for the first time , and inspect her parents from a distance .
( We all attempt this , at our own pace ; to an extent , she ’ s just a late starter . )
Is their attitude something worse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would they rob their daughter ?
Might they be , as Melanie dares to suggest , “ monsters ” ?
What ’ s unusual about “ Kajillionaire , ” and what makes it July ’ s most absorbing film to date , is that you can feel her testing and challenging her own aptitude for whimsy .
Think of her as an American descendant , many times removed , of Edward Lear , whose creatures , though frequently charming , are badgered by frustration or doomed to a punishing solitude .
The Dynes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in Lear ’ s telling , recklessly went to sea in a sieve , crying out , “ How wise we are !
” Thus it is that Robert , strolling down a street , pauses to admire his reflection in a store window .
“ Look at this guy , ” he declares .
“ I feel like a senator !
” Not that most senators would be prepared , as Robert is , to go around with an untucked shirt .
( Those of us who love Richard Jenkins for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the frowningly intense will delight in his portrayal of Robert , who is not so weary of the world that he won ’ t milk it for every drop he can get . )
When Melanie says that “ most happiness comes from dumb things , ” she ’ s being honest rather than sententious , and July uses “ Kajillionaire ” to present her credentials as a transcendentalist of the humdrum .
Look at Old Dolio buying fat bags of snacks in a convenience store , in the aftermath of a very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be “ the big one.
” Notice the sunlight flaring through her hair as she dances , badly and wildly , or the extreme closeup of her fingers as she prizes off Melanie ’ s acrylic nails , making every effort not to hurt her .
Life can be as mean as sin , and pleasure can pop at any moment .
You have to catch the bubbles while you can .
If you have enjoyed the company of the Dynes , watch out .
You may find it hard to adjust to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problems .
Take the Smythsons , of East Hampton , whose saga we follow in “ The Artist ’ s Wife.
” Richard Smythson ( Bruce Dern ) is a celebrated painter .
He is married to Claire ( Lena Olin ) , who renounced her own artistic career , years ago , in favor of his .
By an earlier relationship , he has a daughter , Angela ( Juliet Rylance ) , from whom he is estranged .
He has never met her son , Gogo ( Ravi Cabot-Conyers ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Richard ’ s discontent is a harsh season , and he has all but frozen solid , slathering a canvas with ice-white paint .
He keeps losing his manners and his temper—as creative persons , for some reason , are allowed or encouraged to do .
What Claire fears , though , is that he is also mislaying his mind .

When it comes to freaky families, whom do you think of first? The Munsters, the Addamses, the Borgias, the Romanovs, the Tenenbaums, or the Trumps? How about the House of Atreus? The list is a distinguished one, and it’s blessed by the arrival of a new bunch, in Miranda July’s “Kajillionaire.” Say hello to the Dynes, who number precisely three: Robert (Richard Jenkins), his wife, Theresa (Debra Winger), and their daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), who is twenty-six. They may lack imperial trappings, and their wealth, as yet, is not the stuff of legend. In the noble art of clipping coupons, however, or of collecting the half-eaten snacks that other passengers have left behind on airplanes, the Dynes are unsurpassed.
They live in Los Angeles, which is something of a joke, since they don’t have a car. Or, for that matter, a home. Their current dwelling is a bubble factory, if you please, where they bed down on the office floor. Clouds of pink foam keep frothing through cracks at the top of the wall and creeping downward—a silly, non-scary version of the blood that surges in from the elevator’s edge in “The Shining” (1980). Needless to say, the Dynes are behind on rent; the building manager looks terribly upset about it, though his tears are involuntary. “I have no filters,” he says. In a bid to elude him, the family goes into contortions whenever they pass the factory, bending down or, in the case of Old Dolio, leaning perilously backward, like a limbo dancer. Filmed from the side, in a travelling shot, they look like an experimental-ballet troupe.
Fans of July, who directed “Me and You and Everyone We Know” (2005) and “The Future” (2011), will be cool with this level of weirdness, because she herself is forever medium cool. The foibles of her characters require no explanation, and we never quite learn how the Dynes became the Dynes. Did they once have money, a place of their own, and steady jobs, and then lose everything, or is dispossession their natural state? Either way, they now subsist on scavenging and scams; the movie kicks off with a heist, as Old Dolio—who, like her mother, has a long and listless curtain of hair—enters a post office in a series of leaps and rolls. She looks like a hippie commando. Once inside, she filches packages from other people’s mailboxes, with a view to selling the contents or claiming a refund. As crime goes, it lacks a little pizzazz. Imagine the hoodlums in “Heat” (1995) storming a bank and coming away with a necktie.
While you’re wondering how long the rest of the movie can, or should, noodle along in this kooky fashion, up springs a plot. A young woman, Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), makes the family’s acquaintance and, bringing along a bright idea for a hustle, joins the slipstream of their turbid days. In particular, she befriends Old Dolio—who was named, apparently, for a lottery-winning homeless man, in the hope that he might offer her a legacy. (No luck.) There’s a lovely scene in which the two women visit a supermarket, with Old Dolio pointing out the aisles where, thanks to a security-camera blind spot, shoplifting would be a steal. Melanie’s plan is bolder still: she’s going to pay for what’s in her cart. Talk about radical.
The movie needs Rodriguez, whose demeanor, upbeat and no-nonsense, interrupts the lilt of eccentricity that prevails elsewhere. Whereas Old Dolio’s voice is a low and halting drone, all too fitting for someone so woefully unsocialized, Melanie delivers her lines with a snap and a smile. Yet even she has her secrets. Having told the Dynes that she’s an assistant to an ophthalmologist at Cedars-Sinai, she later admits to working for a regular optician, selling bifocals to the aged. It’s not a terrible lie, but it bolsters our impression that July’s characters are not so much being themselves as playing themselves, so to speak, and continually tweaking who they wish to be. Hence the unnerving ease with which, after sneaking into the house of a sick and elderly man (“He’s trying to die,” Old Dolio reports), they settle in at their leisure. Theresa dons an apron and serves cake; Robert watches golf on TV. “I think I will mow the lawn tomorrow,” he announces. They could get used to this existence. Millions of folks do.
No one seeks out a movie like this in search of rage, let alone political heft, yet there are stirrings of disquiet—if not of outright protest—as Melanie urges Old Dolio to step back, for the first time, and inspect her parents from a distance. (We all attempt this, at our own pace; to an extent, she’s just a late starter.) Is their attitude something worse than wacky? In a pinch, would they rob their daughter? Might they be, as Melanie dares to suggest, “monsters”? What’s unusual about “Kajillionaire,” and what makes it July’s most absorbing film to date, is that you can feel her testing and challenging her own aptitude for whimsy. Think of her as an American descendant, many times removed, of Edward Lear, whose creatures, though frequently charming, are badgered by frustration or doomed to a punishing solitude. The Dynes remind me of the Jumblies, who, in Lear’s telling, recklessly went to sea in a sieve, crying out, “How wise we are!”
Thus it is that Robert, strolling down a street, pauses to admire his reflection in a store window. “Look at this guy,” he declares. “I feel like a senator!” Not that most senators would be prepared, as Robert is, to go around with an untucked shirt. (Those of us who love Richard Jenkins for his unique fusion of the absent-minded and the frowningly intense will delight in his portrayal of Robert, who is not so weary of the world that he won’t milk it for every drop he can get.) When Melanie says that “most happiness comes from dumb things,” she’s being honest rather than sententious, and July uses “Kajillionaire” to present her credentials as a transcendentalist of the humdrum. Look at Old Dolio buying fat bags of snacks in a convenience store, in the aftermath of a very minor earthquake, which she believes to be “the big one.” Notice the sunlight flaring through her hair as she dances, badly and wildly, or the extreme closeup of her fingers as she prizes off Melanie’s acrylic nails, making every effort not to hurt her. Life can be as mean as sin, and pleasure can pop at any moment. You have to catch the bubbles while you can.
If you have enjoyed the company of the Dynes, watch out. You may find it hard to adjust to more orthodox souls, however grave their problems. Take the Smythsons, of East Hampton, whose saga we follow in “The Artist’s Wife.” Richard Smythson (Bruce Dern) is a celebrated painter. He is married to Claire (Lena Olin), who renounced her own artistic career, years ago, in favor of his. By an earlier relationship, he has a daughter, Angela (Juliet Rylance), from whom he is estranged. He has never met her son, Gogo (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), who is six. The winter of Richard’s discontent is a harsh season, and he has all but frozen solid, slathering a canvas with ice-white paint. He keeps losing his manners and his temper—as creative persons, for some reason, are allowed or encouraged to do. What Claire fears, though, is that he is also mislaying his mind.
It is soon confirmed that Richard has Alzheimer’s, though whether the film, directed by Tom Dolby, is specifically about dementia—as were “Away from Her” (2007), with Julie Christie, and “Still Alice” (2015), with Julianne Moore—is open to debate. The medical aspects of the case begin and end with a sequence in which Claire picks up a prescription. Other than that, she seems oddly unbothered by practicalities, nipping into New York for the day, or for a boozy night, and leaving her husband to fend for himself. What grieves her is the way that he turns on her, as if to mock the sacrifice that she has made. Is it his recent decline that causes such rages to erupt, or have they always been there, below the crust? Lurking in this tale is a scalding proposition: maybe artists come with a dementia of their own, quick to blank out the needs of others without any help from a degenerative disease.
If only the style of “The Artist’s Wife” could scald with equal intent. Alas, it opts for plangency, with a musical score applied like a gentle balm, and a plot that hungers for healing—absurdly so, given the incurable nature of Richard’s plight. Claire has a near-fling with Gogo’s handsome babysitter, Danny (Avan Jogia), and even he suffers from inventive yearnings, solemnly presenting her with a CD of his songs. Jeez, couldn’t someone here be nonartistic? Any chance of an accountant showing up? On the other hand, if it’s serious choler you want, then Dern, at eighty-four, is still your guy, with the toothy thrust of his jaw as militant as ever, and his grin morphing into a snarl. As for Olin, she makes Claire both ravishing and ravaged, and I couldn’t help recalling Ingmar Bergman’s “After the Rehearsal” (1984), in which the youthful Olin played an actress who, like Claire, did intimate battle with an older man. The closeups were unwavering, and the whole thing was shot without music and set on the bare boards of a theatre. That’s the way to do it. ♦


newyorker--2020-09-18--Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Supreme Court Justice Who Demonstrated the Power of Dissent

Ruth Bader Ginsburg , scholar , lawyer , judge , and Justice , died on Friday at the age of eighty-seven .
Born the year Eleanor Roosevelt became First Lady , Ginsburg bore witness to , argued for , and helped to constitutionalize the most hard-fought and least-appreciated revolution in modern American history : the emancipation of women .
Aside from Thurgood Marshall , no single American has so wholly advanced the cause of equality under the law .
The change Ginsburg ushered into American politics began a half century ago , and reckoning with its magnitude requires measuring the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the time , only three in a hundred legal professionals and fewer than two hundred of the nation ’ s ten thousand judges were women .
In 1971 , as Richard Nixon prepared to make two appointments to the Supreme Court , he faced a dilemma .
Yet another Southerner he ’ d tapped had been nixed for an opposition to desegregation , so Nixon decided to look for someone who was , preferably , not a racist .
He considered naming a woman .
“ I ’ m not for women , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he told his aides , in a little fit of hysterics .
“ Thank God we don ’ t have any in the Cabinet.
” He didn ’ t think women should be educated , or “ ever be allowed to vote , even.
” But , given the momentum of the women ’ s-rights movement , he conceded the political necessity of naming a woman to the bench : it might gain him a small but crucial number of votes in the upcoming election .
“ It ’ s like the Negro @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s a hell of a thing.
” Then Chief Justice Warren Burger , in a similar huff , told Nixon that , if he were to nominate a woman , he ’ d resign .
In the end , Nixon named Lewis Powell .
While all these men were dithering , Ruth Bader Ginsburg was working for the A.C.L.U.
, writing the brief for a case set to go before the Court , Reed v. Reed .
Decided on November 22 , 1971 , weeks after Powell ’ s confirmation hearings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of American jurisprudence and the entirety of political thought going back to the beginning of the Republic .
Before 1971 , as Ginsburg would later write , “ Neither legislators nor judges regarded gender lines as ‘ back of the bus ’ regulations .
Rather , these rules were said to place women on a pedestal.
” Thomas Jefferson had taken the trouble to explain that women had no part in the Framers ’ understanding of the government devised by the Constitution .
“ Were our state a pure democracy , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ excluded from their deliberations .
.
.
women ; who , to prevent deprivation of morals , and ambiguity of issues , could not mix promiscuously in the public gatherings of men.
” Women were to be excluded for their own protection .
The early women ’ s-rights movement , in the middle decades of the nineteenth century , had not defeated that argument , and the Fourteenth Amendment , ratified in 1868 , did not explicitly—or implicitly , according to the Court—bar discrimination on the basis of sex .
In 1873 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bradwell had sued the state of Illinois for denying her the right to practice law , one Supreme Court Justice explained his logic this way : “ The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.
” That , as Ginsburg liked to say , was a cage , pretending to be a pedestal .
Reed v. Reed , in 1971 , involved an Idaho statute that gave preference to men— “ males must be preferred to females @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , following Ginsburg ’ s brief , ruled for the first time that discrimination on the basis of sex violated the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment .
Writing for the majority , Burger used language that had been introduced by Ginsburg : “ To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other , merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits , is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ; and whatever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ values of avoiding intrafamily controversy , the choice in this context may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of sex.
” Just a few years later , Ginsburg was arguing her own cases before the Court , and the Chief Justice was stumbling over how to address her .
“ Mrs .
Bader ?
Mrs. Ginsburg ?
” Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn in 1933 and went to Cornell , where she met Martin Ginsburg .
They married and enrolled at Harvard Law School , which had only just begun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and also cared for Marty , who was diagnosed with cancer , and then she followed him to New York , finishing her law degree at Columbia .
She faced discrimination on the basis of sex at every stage of her career .
Tied for first in her class at Columbia , she was unable to get a job practicing law at a New York firm .
But , far from being defeated by discrimination , she decided to study it .
She began teaching at Rutgers in 1963 ; in 1969 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nursery school , she was promoted to full professor , and began volunteering for the A.C.L.U.
, where she later headed the Women ’ s Rights Project .
In 1972 , just two months after the Court handed down its ruling in Reed v. Reed , Ginsburg became the first woman to hold a full professorship at Columbia .
“ The only confining thing for me is time , ” she told the New York Times .
“ I ’ m not going to curtail my activities in any way to please them.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ argued six cases before the Court , and won four .
As Jeffrey Toobin reported in a Profile of Ginsburg , she took a crucial tip from the woman who typed her briefs .
“ I was doing all these sex-discrimination cases , and my secretary said , ‘ I look at these pages and all I see is sex , sex , sex .
The judges are men , and when they read that they ’ re not going to be thinking about what you want them to think about , ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rename this type of complaint “ gender discrimination.
” Ginsburg sometimes said that tackling gender discrimination , case by case , was like “ knitting a sweater , ” a phrase perhaps meant to disarm her opponents .
The actual sweater should have been a constitutional amendment .
Ginsburg advocated , vehemently , for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment , which had been passed by Congress in 1972 ; she argued that it looked “ toward a legal system in which each person will be judged on individual merit and not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of birth.
” And she regretted the Court ’ s logic in Roe v. Wade , in 1973 , a case decided not on an equal-rights argument but on a privacy one .
( As I pointed out in a 2018 essay , when asked by the A.C.L.U .
to take on the defense of Roe , Ginsburg declined . )
In 1980 , when Jimmy Carter nominated Ginsburg to the D.C .
Circuit Court , an aide in Strom Thurmond ’ s office , at her confirmation hearings , called her a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only member of the committee to vote against her .
Ginsburg ’ s position on Roe earned her the ire of many feminists who failed to support her nomination to the Supreme Court , in 1993 .
“ My approach , I believe , is neither liberal nor conservative , ” she told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary , chaired by Joe Biden .
That her nomination had been uncontroversial is entirely a myth , as is the idea that her opinions , after her confirmation , were caustic and biting , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on “ Saturday Night Live.
” Ginsburg believed in the body of the Court , in collegiality of argument , and in moderation of expression .
She was famously , even maddeningly , careful .
She took so much time thinking about what people said to her , and choosing her own words , Toobin reported , that “ her clerks came up with what they call the two-Mississippi rule : after speaking , wait two beats before you say anything else .
”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, scholar, lawyer, judge, and Justice, died on Friday at the age of eighty-seven. Born the year Eleanor Roosevelt became First Lady, Ginsburg bore witness to, argued for, and helped to constitutionalize the most hard-fought and least-appreciated revolution in modern American history: the emancipation of women. Aside from Thurgood Marshall, no single American has so wholly advanced the cause of equality under the law.
The change Ginsburg ushered into American politics began a half century ago, and reckoning with its magnitude requires measuring the distance between now and then. At the time, only three in a hundred legal professionals and fewer than two hundred of the nation’s ten thousand judges were women. In 1971, as Richard Nixon prepared to make two appointments to the Supreme Court, he faced a dilemma. Yet another Southerner he’d tapped had been nixed for an opposition to desegregation, so Nixon decided to look for someone who was, preferably, not a racist. He considered naming a woman. “I’m not for women, frankly, in any job,” he told his aides, in a little fit of hysterics. “Thank God we don’t have any in the Cabinet.” He didn’t think women should be educated, or “ever be allowed to vote, even.” But, given the momentum of the women’s-rights movement, he conceded the political necessity of naming a woman to the bench: it might gain him a small but crucial number of votes in the upcoming election. “It’s like the Negro vote,” he said. “It’s a hell of a thing.” Then Chief Justice Warren Burger, in a similar huff, told Nixon that, if he were to nominate a woman, he’d resign. In the end, Nixon named Lewis Powell.
While all these men were dithering, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was working for the A.C.L.U., writing the brief for a case set to go before the Court, Reed v. Reed. Decided on November 22, 1971, weeks after Powell’s confirmation hearings, Reed v. Reed upended a century of American jurisprudence and the entirety of political thought going back to the beginning of the Republic. Before 1971, as Ginsburg would later write, “Neither legislators nor judges regarded gender lines as ‘back of the bus’ regulations. Rather, these rules were said to place women on a pedestal.” Thomas Jefferson had taken the trouble to explain that women had no part in the Framers’ understanding of the government devised by the Constitution. “Were our state a pure democracy,” he wrote, “there would yet be excluded from their deliberations . . . women; who, to prevent deprivation of morals, and ambiguity of issues, could not mix promiscuously in the public gatherings of men.” Women were to be excluded for their own protection. The early women’s-rights movement, in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, had not defeated that argument, and the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, did not explicitly—or implicitly, according to the Court—bar discrimination on the basis of sex. In 1873, ruling on a case in which Myra Bradwell had sued the state of Illinois for denying her the right to practice law, one Supreme Court Justice explained his logic this way: “The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.” That, as Ginsburg liked to say, was a cage, pretending to be a pedestal.
Reed v. Reed, in 1971, involved an Idaho statute that gave preference to men—“males must be preferred to females”—in executing estates. The Court, following Ginsburg’s brief, ruled for the first time that discrimination on the basis of sex violated the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Writing for the majority, Burger used language that had been introduced by Ginsburg: “To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and whatever may be said as to the positive values of avoiding intrafamily controversy, the choice in this context may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of sex.” Just a few years later, Ginsburg was arguing her own cases before the Court, and the Chief Justice was stumbling over how to address her. “Mrs. Bader? Mrs. Ginsburg?”
Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn in 1933 and went to Cornell, where she met Martin Ginsburg. They married and enrolled at Harvard Law School, which had only just begun admitting women. Ginsburg raised their baby, and also cared for Marty, who was diagnosed with cancer, and then she followed him to New York, finishing her law degree at Columbia. She faced discrimination on the basis of sex at every stage of her career. Tied for first in her class at Columbia, she was unable to get a job practicing law at a New York firm. But, far from being defeated by discrimination, she decided to study it. She began teaching at Rutgers in 1963; in 1969, the year her second child entered nursery school, she was promoted to full professor, and began volunteering for the A.C.L.U., where she later headed the Women’s Rights Project.
In 1972, just two months after the Court handed down its ruling in Reed v. Reed, Ginsburg became the first woman to hold a full professorship at Columbia. “The only confining thing for me is time,” she told the New York Times. “I’m not going to curtail my activities in any way to please them.” While teaching at Columbia, Ginsburg argued six cases before the Court, and won four. As Jeffrey Toobin reported in a Profile of Ginsburg, she took a crucial tip from the woman who typed her briefs. “I was doing all these sex-discrimination cases, and my secretary said, ‘I look at these pages and all I see is sex, sex, sex. The judges are men, and when they read that they’re not going to be thinking about what you want them to think about,’ ” Ginsburg said. She decided to rename this type of complaint “gender discrimination.”
Ginsburg sometimes said that tackling gender discrimination, case by case, was like “knitting a sweater,” a phrase perhaps meant to disarm her opponents. The actual sweater should have been a constitutional amendment. Ginsburg advocated, vehemently, for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1972; she argued that it looked “toward a legal system in which each person will be judged on individual merit and not on the basis of an unalterable trait of birth.” And she regretted the Court’s logic in Roe v. Wade, in 1973, a case decided not on an equal-rights argument but on a privacy one. (As I pointed out in a 2018 essay, when asked by the A.C.L.U. to take on the defense of Roe, Ginsburg declined.) In 1980, when Jimmy Carter nominated Ginsburg to the D.C. Circuit Court, an aide in Strom Thurmond’s office, at her confirmation hearings, called her a “one-issue woman.” Thurmond was the only member of the committee to vote against her.
Ginsburg’s position on Roe earned her the ire of many feminists who failed to support her nomination to the Supreme Court, in 1993. “My approach, I believe, is neither liberal nor conservative,” she told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, chaired by Joe Biden. That her nomination had been uncontroversial is entirely a myth, as is the idea that her opinions, after her confirmation, were caustic and biting, the “Ginsburns” of her character on “Saturday Night Live.” Ginsburg believed in the body of the Court, in collegiality of argument, and in moderation of expression. She was famously, even maddeningly, careful. She took so much time thinking about what people said to her, and choosing her own words, Toobin reported, that “her clerks came up with what they call the two-Mississippi rule: after speaking, wait two beats before you say anything else.”
Her most significant opinions were those she wrote for the majority, including in U.S. v. Virginia, a 1996 case in which the Court ruled that the Virginia Military Institute’s refusal to enroll female students violated the equal-protection clause. Ginsburg’s opinion served as a history lesson, partly for the public and partly for her fellow-Justices. “Through a century plus three decades and more, women did not count among voters composing ‘We the People,’ ” she wrote. “Not until 1920 did women gain a constitutional right to the franchise. And for a half century thereafter, it remained the prevailing doctrine that government, both federal and state, could withhold from women opportunities accorded men so long as any ‘basis in reason’ could be conceived for the discrimination.” The turning point, she observed, had come in Reed v. Reed: “In 1971, for the first time in our Nation’s history, this Court ruled in favor of a woman who complained that her State had denied her the equal protection of its laws.”
Of course, the real turning point had come when Ginsburg joined the bench. For most of Ginsburg’s career, the Court had been fairly moderate. It was not until the nineteen-eighties, when Reagan appointed Antonin Scalia, that modern conservatives began to join the Court. During Ginsburg’s tenure, George W. Bush appointed Justices Roberts and Alito, and Trump appointed Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. As the Court shifted, Ginsburg was cast as its Great Dissenter, though the role went largely against her disposition. Ginsburg cherished honest disagreement, firmly expressed, but she disliked petty, scathing opinions. In “Speaking in a Judicial Voice,” a lecture she delivered in 1992, the year before she joined the Court, she condemned “the immoderate tone of statements diverging from the positions of the court’s majority.” “The most effective dissent,” she wrote, “spells out differences without jeopardizing collegiality or public respect for and confidence in the judiciary.”


newyorker--2020-09-18--Joe Biden’s Pitch to the Doubters

Joe Biden’s Pitch to the Doubters

Has a Presidential front-runner ever come in for more doubt than Joe Biden ?
All through 2019 , even as national and state polls showed him ahead in the Democratic primary race , his opponents and the press dismissed him .
His leads were illusory , they said .
He was out of touch , his campaign operation too ramshackle , his support too tepid .
During the primary debates , he often found himself on the butt end of viral sound bites .
Afterward , in the spin rooms , his surrogates would stare down gangs of reporters who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same question : “ How long can this go on ?
” Even Biden occasionally seemed to hesitate .
At his campaign stops in the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses—where you could often feel and occasionally even see audience members ’ attention drifting—the candidate would sometimes cede the stage to prominent supporters , letting them serve as closers , making the pitch to voters .
It was a situation so strange that , in early February , one of those prominent supporters , former Secretary of State John Kerry , was overheard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ins and outs of making a late jump into the Presidential race .
In the months since the Democratic primary effectively ended , in early March , Biden has never come close to trailing Donald Trump in the polling averages .
The map of the so-called battleground states , too , has consistently favored him .
Polls have found that Biden attracts strong support from seniors—a crucial voting demographic that Democrats had until recently thought was lost for good to Republicans—and that voters , over all , hold Biden in higher esteem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus response to racism to trustworthiness .
FiveThirtyEight ’ s election model currently gives Trump about a one in four chance of winning the election .
It gives slightly higher odds that Biden will win the national popular vote by more than ten percentage points—a feat not seen since Ronald Reagan trounced Walter Mondale , in 1984 .
The Trump campaign spent the summer disparaging Biden , cutting deceptive videos of him in an attempt to make him look befuddled , or worse .
But Biden has generally been gaffe-free since winning the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ times , but he ’ s been sharp when the most eyes have been on him , such as during his acceptance speech , last month , at the Democratic National Convention .
And after struggling to fund his campaign during the primaries , he ’ s enjoyed a historic surge of donations in recent weeks , helping him erase the financial advantage that many pundits believed Trump would enjoy this fall no matter who the Democratic nominee was .
And yet the doubts are creeping back up on Biden .
This week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Does Biden Need a Higher Gear ?
Some Democrats Think So.
” There have been questions about whether he ’ s spending enough time in the Midwest .
Whether he ’ s making strong enough overtures to Hispanic voters .
And whether his campaign ’ s decision to abandon door-knocking this spring , as the pandemic exploded around the country , should be maintained through the fall .
Bernie Sanders , the leader of the Democratic Party ’ s left wing , who has embraced an alliance with the moderate Biden in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to the Washington Post , been “ urging Biden ’ s team to intensify its focus on pocketbook issues and appeals to liberal voters.
” Some of this , no doubt , is anxiety provoked by the memory of 2016 .
The word “ front-runner ” gives Democrats the willies .
No polling lead can be trusted .
Some of this , also , is a response to a general-election campaign that looks very different from what anyone could have imagined when 2020 began .
Can a septuagenarian live streamer win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently begun to emerge from the basement-bound campaign he waged this spring and summer , into , in the words of the Washington Post campaign reporter David Weigel , a “ Bubble Campaign , ” making select , targeted trips around the country to speak in front of small audiences .
Some of these trips seem explicitly designed to quiet doubts .
Last week , Biden spoke in Michigan and Pennsylvania about union jobs .
This week , he gave a speech in Delaware about the California wildfires and climate change , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Meanwhile , his campaign announced that it was spending almost ten million dollars a day on paid media , including two new ads about health care that will run in the Midwest and the Sun Belt .
On Thursday night , Biden participated in a “ drive-in town hall ” on CNN , his most prominent public appearance since the D.N.C .
A few dozen members of the public drove up to and parked around a stage in a baseball stadium in Moosic , Pennsylvania—not far from Biden ’ s boyhood home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Democratic nominee some questions .
Back in front of a national audience , Biden was , once again , sharp .
He projected righteous anger at Trump ’ s coronavirus response—frankly , he sounded pissed—and shook his head with sorrow at the lives lost .
“ We talk about two hundred thousand deaths and it ’ s almost like background noise , ” he said .
Every Democrat who campaigned for the Presidential nomination last year had to choose how much to balance a critique of Trump with a proposed governing agenda @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his run as any of his opponents .
Voters rewarded him , and he ’ s staying the course now .
Biden spent much of Thursday night speaking about the current President and the current crises facing the nation , reminding viewers of Trump ’ s petulant outbursts , his aversion to masks , and the awful things that he has said about veterans .
“ This is all about one thing—the stock market , ” Biden said .
“ It ’ s all about his reëlection .
It should be about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his own cards close to his chest : when questioners got into the weeds on an issue , Biden often simply urged them to visit his Web site .
When he did get specific , it was on topics like fracking , which he said that he still supports as a transitional energy source while the country moves to a renewable-energy future—a middle-ground stance on carbon emissions that infuriates the left .
He continued to reject the mantle of the Green New Deal , even as he has absorbed its key insight that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be pitched to voters as the same project .
When a woman criticized how the increased unemployment benefits that Congress temporarily passed earlier this year meant that many Americans made more on unemployment than they did in the workforce , Biden didn ’ t try to convince her that the federal minimum wage is appallingly low , nor did he take the opportunity to call on Congress to end the impasse over another round of economic relief for its citizens—he simply encouraged the questioner to empathize with her neighbors who don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make their next rent or mortgage payment .
Barring some seismic , unforeseen shift in public opinion , Biden will win a larger proportion of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton did four years ago—a plurality of the public , generally , wants Biden to be sworn in as President on January 21 , 2021 .
Trump ’ s remaining chances for reëlection are thanks to the Electoral College .
The President knows this—his strategy has not been to run a national campaign but to again try to juice the margins in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ targeting a few thousand voters in specific districts could be a winning strategy when the popular-vote margin will likely be in the many millions is , of course , absurd .
But it ’ s also where many of the current doubts about Biden find their purchase .
With the voting changes and challenges brought on by the pandemic , and with states rushing to adopt early and mail-in voting in an attempt to keep voters and election workers safe , the race between Trump and Biden has become as much about mechanics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their parties are currently engaged in high-stakes court fights around the country over voting rules and ballot access , and the results may determine the outcome of the election as much as any back-and-forth that takes place at one of the three upcoming Presidential debates .

Has a Presidential front-runner ever come in for more doubt than Joe Biden? All through 2019, even as national and state polls showed him ahead in the Democratic primary race, his opponents and the press dismissed him. His leads were illusory, they said. He was out of touch, his campaign operation too ramshackle, his support too tepid. During the primary debates, he often found himself on the butt end of viral sound bites. Afterward, in the spin rooms, his surrogates would stare down gangs of reporters who were all basically asking veiled versions of the same question: “How long can this go on?” Even Biden occasionally seemed to hesitate. At his campaign stops in the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses—where you could often feel and occasionally even see audience members’ attention drifting—the candidate would sometimes cede the stage to prominent supporters, letting them serve as closers, making the pitch to voters. It was a situation so strange that, in early February, one of those prominent supporters, the former Secretary of State John Kerry, was overheard in a Des Moines hotel lobby discussing the ins and outs of making a late jump into the Presidential race.
In the months since the Democratic primary effectively ended, in early March, Biden has never come close to trailing Donald Trump in the polling averages. The map of the so-called battleground states, too, has consistently favored him. Polls have found that Biden attracts strong support from seniors—a crucial voting demographic that Democrats had until recently thought was lost for good to Republicans—and that voters, over all, hold Biden in higher esteem than Trump on issues ranging from the coronavirus response to racism to trustworthiness. FiveThirtyEight’s election model currently gives Trump about a one in four chance of winning the election. It gives slightly higher odds that Biden will win the national popular vote by more than ten percentage points—a feat not seen since Ronald Reagan trounced Walter Mondale, in 1984. The Trump campaign spent the summer disparaging Biden, cutting deceptive videos of him in an attempt to make him look befuddled, or worse. But Biden has generally been gaffe-free since winning the nomination. He has laid low at times, but he’s been sharp when the most eyes have been on him, such as during his acceptance speech, last month, at the Democratic National Convention. And after struggling to fund his campaign during the primaries, he’s enjoyed a historic surge of donations in recent weeks, helping him erase the financial advantage that many pundits believed Trump would enjoy this fall no matter who the Democratic nominee was.
And yet the doubts are creeping back up on Biden. This week, the Times ran the headline “Does Biden Need a Higher Gear? Some Democrats Think So.” There have been questions about whether he’s spending enough time in the Midwest. Whether he’s making strong enough overtures to Hispanic voters. And whether his campaign’s decision to abandon door-knocking this spring, as the pandemic exploded around the country, should be maintained through the fall. Bernie Sanders, the leader of the Democratic Party’s left wing, who has embraced an alliance with the moderate Biden in the name of defeating Trump, has lately, according to the Washington Post, been “urging Biden’s team to intensify its focus on pocketbook issues and appeals to liberal voters.”
Some of this, no doubt, is anxiety provoked by the memory of 2016. The word “front-runner” gives Democrats the willies. No polling lead can be trusted. Some of this, also, is a response to a general-election campaign that looks very different from what anyone could have imagined when 2020 began. Can a septuagenarian live streamer win the White House? Biden has only recently begun to emerge from the basement-bound campaign he waged this spring and summer, into, in the words of the Washington Post campaign reporter David Weigel, a “Bubble Campaign,” making select, targeted trips around the country to speak in front of small audiences. Some of these trips seem explicitly designed to quiet doubts. Last week, Biden spoke in Michigan and Pennsylvania about union jobs. This week, he gave a speech in Delaware about the California wildfires and climate change, and one in Florida about Hispanic Heritage Month. Meanwhile, his campaign announced that it was spending almost ten million dollars a day on paid media, including two new ads about health care that will run in the Midwest and the Sun Belt.
On Thursday night, Biden participated in a “drive-in town hall” on CNN, his most prominent public appearance since the D.N.C. A few dozen members of the public drove up to and parked around a stage in a baseball stadium in Moosic, Pennsylvania—not far from Biden’s boyhood home, in Scranton—for the chance to ask the Democratic nominee some questions. Back in front of a national audience, Biden was, once again, sharp. He projected righteous anger at Trump’s coronavirus response—frankly, he sounded pissed—and shook his head with sorrow at the lives lost. “We talk about two hundred thousand deaths and it’s almost like background noise,” he said.
Every Democrat who campaigned for the Presidential nomination last year had to choose how much to balance a critique of Trump with a proposed governing agenda. Biden made anti-Trumpism as central to his run as any of his opponents. Voters rewarded him, and he’s staying the course now. Biden spent much of Thursday night speaking about the current President and the current crises facing the nation, reminding viewers of Trump’s petulant outbursts, his aversion to masks, and the awful things that he has said about veterans. “This is all about one thing—the stock market,” Biden said. “It’s all about his reëlection. It should be about the American people.” Meanwhile, he kept his own cards close to his chest: when questioners got into the weeds on an issue, Biden often simply urged them to visit his Web site. When he did get specific, it was on topics like fracking, which he said that he still supports as a transitional energy source while the country moves to a renewable-energy future—a middle-ground stance on carbon emissions that infuriates the left. He continued to reject the mantle of the Green New Deal, even as he has absorbed its key insight that fighting climate change and revitalizing the economy should be pitched to voters as the same project. When a woman criticized how the increased unemployment benefits that Congress temporarily passed earlier this year meant that many Americans made more on unemployment than they did in the workforce, Biden didn’t try to convince her that the federal minimum wage is appallingly low, nor did he take the opportunity to call on Congress to end the impasse over another round of economic relief for its citizens—he simply encouraged the questioner to empathize with her neighbors who don’t know how they’re going to make their next rent or mortgage payment.
Barring some seismic, unforeseen shift in public opinion, Biden will win a larger proportion of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton did four years ago—a plurality of the public, generally, wants Biden to be sworn in as President on January 21, 2021. Trump’s remaining chances for reëlection are thanks to the Electoral College. The President knows this—his strategy has not been to run a national campaign but to again try to juice the margins in a few key swing states. That targeting a few thousand voters in specific districts could be a winning strategy when the popular-vote margin will likely be in the many millions is, of course, absurd. But it’s also where many of the current doubts about Biden find their purchase. With the voting changes and challenges brought on by the pandemic, and with states rushing to adopt early and mail-in voting in an attempt to keep voters and election workers safe, the race between Trump and Biden has become as much about mechanics as about politics. The candidates and their parties are currently engaged in high-stakes court fights around the country over voting rules and ballot access, and the results may determine the outcome of the election as much as any back-and-forth that takes place at one of the three upcoming Presidential debates.
Looming over all of this are Trump’s increasingly loud threats to reject the results of the election if things don’t go his way. On Thursday, Biden greeted these questions with a smile. “If the President had even remote confidence that he was likely to win the election,” Biden said, “he wouldn’t be doing this.” Here, too, the doubts creep in. How should Biden respond to the despotic rhetoric and actions of Trump and his allies? What’s the right messaging for the non-zero chance that America is a few weeks away from the end of even the pretense of democracy?
Democrats have spent four years arguing about why Hillary Clinton lost the election in 2016. The doubts now being raised about Biden are about why he’s winning. Sanders may well think that talking about a fifteen-dollar minimum wage will help Biden win voters now, but he also knows that, if Biden the candidate wins with a fifteen-dollar minimum wage front and center, then it will be more likely for Biden the President to make passing that wage increase a priority. The forces that Biden reacts to in the next few weeks could shape the next four years of this country, and beyond. “I’m running as a Democrat, but I’m going to be everyone’s President,” Biden said on Thursday night. “I’m going to be America’s President.”
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-09-18--An Election in Peril, and a New Film by Miranda July

This Presidential race is a battle for the soul and the future of the country—on this much , both parties @ @ @ @ @ process itself is threatened in a number of ways , some of them real , @ @ @ @ @ .
David Remnick runs through some of the risks to your vote with a group @ @ @ @ @ , Miranda July talks with Deborah Treisman , the fiction editor of The New Yorker @ @ @ @ @ comic feature film , in which a heist plot lets her deal with heartbreaking family @ @ @ @ @ Roger Angell on his centennial .
New Yorker political writers cover the numerous risks to @ @ @ @ @ real , some that could be self-fulfilling prophecies .
The writer and filmmaker ’ s @ @ @ @ @ about a family of grifters .
What she calls “ the silly heist stuff ” @ @ @ @ @ family dynamics .
David Remnick toasts Roger Angell , who has contributed to The New @ @ @ @ @ War , with writings on baseball and every other topic under the sun .

Illustration by Golden Cosmos
This Presidential race is a battle for the soul and the future of the country—on this much, both parties agree. Yet the election process itself is threatened in a number of ways, some of them real, some of them self-fulfilling prophecies. David Remnick runs through some of the risks to your vote with a group of staff writers. Plus, Miranda July talks with Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor of The New Yorker, about her third darkly comic feature film, in which a heist plot lets her deal with heartbreaking family dynamics. And we toast Roger Angell on his centennial.
An Election in Peril
New Yorker political writers cover the numerous risks to the election: some quite real, some that could be self-fulfilling prophecies.
Miranda July’s Uncomfortable Comedies
The writer and filmmaker’s third darkly comic feature is about a family of grifters. What she calls “the silly heist stuff” lets her deal with heartbreaking family dynamics.
A Century of Roger Angell
David Remnick toasts Roger Angell, who has contributed to The New Yorker since the Second World War, with writings on baseball and every other topic under the sun.


newyorker--2020-09-18--Solutions and Other Problems: The Poop Mystery

Winter ’ s first snow blankets the remains of autumn .
And inside the house , for the third morning in a row , there is poop just everywhere .
It appears to be horse poop .
No one knows why it ’ s there , but it ’ s a pattern at this point .
Naturally , the first suspects were the horses .
The first theory was that , sometime during each of the three nights , the smaller , weirder horse wandered into the house , ran around everywhere trying to figure out how to escape , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
However , horses weigh roughly a thousand pounds and basically have rocks for feet , so pulling this off undetected would have been impossible .
The horses were therefore temporarily ruled out as suspects , and we broadened our investigation to include the other pets and family members .
Murphy and Charlie were harder to get a read on .
Nobody else was fessing up , either .
A few days later , the case took a mysterious turn when a single , large pile of horse poop appeared in the children @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it would upon exiting a horse—indicating that it was either created by the horses within the bedroom or arranged to look that way .
This strengthened the case against both the horses and the children .
Upon further questioning , the children began crying and screaming .
They said they would “ never do that.
” They pleaded for everyone to “ please believe ” them .
Everyone was disturbed by the notion that the children may have gone out into the night , collected horse poop , and sculpted it into a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bedroom : the children because children hate being accused of things like collecting and arranging animal poop , and the adults because that is the behavior of future criminals .
It was a dark time .
We were all suspects , plagued by doubt , haunted by possibility .
And the piles continued to appear .
Then , early one morning , we were awakened by an ominous thumping sound .
I think we were all scared of it , until we realized that it might be exactly what we had all been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the suspect in the act !
We clustered in the living room , pausing to acknowledge each other with disdainful , I-told-you-it-wasn ’ t-me glances before investigating the noise .
As we crept closer , we could see the back door rattling with each thump .
Something was trying to get in through the dog door .
.
.
.
In a moment , we ’ d know the answers to the questions we ’ d been asking for weeks— “ Who the fuck has been doing this to us ?
Is it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ?
Do we know anyone who hates us enough to do this ?
” —and , all the way to the door , we mentally revised our theories , impatient to find out who was right , but terrified to know .
Then there it was : the answer .
Standing on the other side of the door with a face full of frozen horse poop .
The rest of the story pretty much told itself .
Murphy was sentenced to nighttime house arrest and a stern talkin ’ -to .
From @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Allie Brosh , to be published by Gallery Books .

OCTOBER, 1997
Winter’s first snow blankets the remains of autumn.
And inside the house, for the third morning in a row, there is poop just everywhere.
It appears to be horse poop. No one knows why it’s there, but it’s a pattern at this point.
Naturally, the first suspects were the horses.
The first theory was that, sometime during each of the three nights, the smaller, weirder horse wandered into the house, ran around everywhere trying to figure out how to escape, and was just shitting the entire time.
However, horses weigh roughly a thousand pounds and basically have rocks for feet, so pulling this off undetected would have been impossible. The horses were therefore temporarily ruled out as suspects, and we broadened our investigation to include the other pets and family members.
As usual, Maddy seemed guilty.
Murphy and Charlie were harder to get a read on.
Nobody else was fessing up, either.
A few days later, the case took a mysterious turn when a single, large pile of horse poop appeared in the children’s bedroom, looking exactly as it would upon exiting a horse—indicating that it was either created by the horses within the bedroom or arranged to look that way.
This strengthened the case against both the horses and the children. Upon further questioning, the children began crying and screaming. They said they would “never do that.”
They pleaded for everyone to “please believe” them.
Everyone was disturbed by the notion that the children may have gone out into the night, collected horse poop, and sculpted it into a pile on the floor of their own bedroom: the children because children hate being accused of things like collecting and arranging animal poop, and the adults because that is the behavior of future criminals.
It was a dark time. We were all suspects, plagued by doubt, haunted by possibility.
And the piles continued to appear.
Then, early one morning, we were awakened by an ominous thumping sound.
I think we were all scared of it, until we realized that it might be exactly what we had all been waiting for: an opportunity to catch the suspect in the act!
We clustered in the living room, pausing to acknowledge each other with disdainful, I-told-you-it-wasn’t-me glances before investigating the noise.
As we crept closer, we could see the back door rattling with each thump. Something was trying to get in through the dog door. . . .
In a moment, we’d know the answers to the questions we’d been asking for weeks—“Who the fuck has been doing this to us? Is it the neighbors?? Which neighbor is it? Do we know anyone who hates us enough to do this?”—and, all the way to the door, we mentally revised our theories, impatient to find out who was right, but terrified to know.
Then there it was: the answer. Standing on the other side of the door with a face full of frozen horse poop.
The rest of the story pretty much told itself.
Murphy was sentenced to nighttime house arrest and a stern talkin’-to.
From “Solutions and Other Problems,” by Allie Brosh, to be published by Gallery Books.


newyorker--2020-09-18--Scientists Advance on One of Technology’s Holy Grails

Protein researchers speak of the “ folding problem ” —the challenge of predicting ahead of time what shape a chain will take .
Nature solves the folding problem easily , using the ultimate parallel-processing computer : the universe .
In the real world , every particle interacts with every other particle simultaneously .
But human-built computers , which make most calculations sequentially , struggle to simulate this process .
Given a simulated protein—rendered onscreen as a rainbow-colored wad of ribbon , or as a bunch of grapes—a piece of software might attempt to calculate how different folds will affect the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea is to fold the protein in a consistently downhill direction .
But finding the steepest path on such complex terrain is tricky .
Sometimes it ’ s not even clear which way is down .
A computer might bring the folding to a stop when , in fact , there is further to go—as though the simulated golf ball has become trapped in a divot from which a real one might easily escape .
The software must sometimes cheat a little : picking up the ball and moving it , to see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The most sophisticated program for modelling protein folding is called Rosetta .
Baker and his graduate students started writing it in 1996 ; it looks like a video game crossed with a programming environment , with images of proteins filling some windows and complicated code scrolling in others .
Rosetta is open source , and runs on a variety of platforms .
It ’ s now used by hundreds of academic labs and companies around the world , all of whom contribute to the code , which is millions of lines long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ top-shelf coder , doubts that any of his own code remains : in the early days , comments left next to his contributions would identify them as “ crazy Baker stuff.
” Still , Sarel Fleishman said , “ David ’ s lab and David himself have been incredibly dominant in this field .
Dominant not in the sense of fending people off—it ’ s actually the reverse .
It ’ s about openness.
” Protein folding has obvious commercial applications , but Rosetta is mostly free .
“ One of the good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would ever make any money directly from it , ” Baker told me .
The funds generated from corporate licenses go into a pot guarded by a nonprofit called RosettaCommons ; some of the money pays for RosettaCon , an annual summer gathering of protein folders traditionally held in August , in Leavenworth , Washington , a mountain town about two hours away from I.P.D .
This year , the pandemic upended tradition , and the meeting was held virtually .
Meanwhile , in April , a couple hundred researchers convened an early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ A lot of us have been talking about the idea of feeling called to work on COVID during this time , ” Rebecca Alford , who completed her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins , in June , told me .
The fact that so many protein designers use Rosetta has made impromptu collaboration easy .
Alford said , “ You can ask someone in California or in China , ‘ What do I do with this piece of code ?
’ ” Protein-folding software has two main components : a “ sampling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The sampler tries different starting places for the golf ball ; the energy function aims to direct it downhill .
From the beginning , Rosetta , drawing on Baker ’ s lab experiments , was good at both tasks .
It successfully predicted protein folds .
But it achieved its singular position in the field because of tweaks and additions made , over the years , by the larger community of researchers , which honed the software ’ s precision and extended its capabilities .
“ Every new generation of students is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ They share in the progress and benefits—including a very luxurious , all-expenses meeting and reunion once a year.
” In the nineteen-seventies , the pioneers of protein design worked by building physical models of their amino-acid chains .
William DeGrado , a biochemist at the University of California , San Francisco , coined the term “ de novo ” protein design in the nineteen-eighties ; he recalled , “ I was told it was going to be impossible quite a bit.
” Protein design is a two-way street : you must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from a sequence and also find the right sequence for a desired shape .
It ’ s a give-and-take , with the overarching goal of finding a shape that does something useful , such as binding , antibody-like , to a virus .
A protein designer might start by taking natural proteins and tweaking them .
She might also use a system of directed evolution , in which large collections of proteins are tested , selected for certain properties , and then mutated , over and over , until the right traits emerge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won Arnold her Nobel Prize . )
Thanks to improved computational tools , including Rosetta , and faster methods for making and testing proteins , de-novo design has begun to show real promise .
“ It ’ s amazing how much progress has been made , and how it ’ s just accelerating so rapidly , ” DeGrado said .
Baker agreed that progress was speeding up .
“ The fact that we ’ re spinning out a couple of companies a year is kind of remarkable , ” he said .
His @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convinced him that the grail is almost within reach .
“ The hope is that the next time there ’ s an outbreak , within two days , we ’ ll have models of candidates , ” he told me .
Broadly speaking , new advances in protein design have clustered in three main areas .
The first is “ binding ” —the construction of proteins that adhere tightly to biological targets .
In May , I spent a Friday night video-chatting with Inna Goreshnik , a research scientist at I.P.D.
, as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Longxing Cao , a postdoc .
( I.P.D .
occupies the top two floors of its building , and is home to around a hundred and thirty scientists , seventy of whom work in Baker ’ s lab . )
Goreshnik stood at a lab bench in a striped sweater and face mask .
“ This is very stressful , ” she said , as she carried out the calculations needed to prepare the samples .
“ I usually don ’ t have anyone watching me do math.
” Their target was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Earlier , Cao had identified a vulnerable spot on the virus ’ s spike protein—a kind of grappling hook on its outer shell which enables it to invade cells .
His goal was to design “ binder ” proteins that would adhere to that particular spot on the spike , thereby disabling its function .
Rosetta contained a precise model of the spike ; Cao had written scripts that used that model to generate , de novo , binders that might work .
It was as though , given the measurements of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ glove .
The program ended up suggesting nearly a hundred thousand possible binders , most between fifty-five and eighty-eight amino acids long .
For a few thousand dollars , Cao hired a biotech company to produce DNA strands—synthetic genes—that could instruct cells to build those binders .
He then introduced each synthetic gene , encoding a unique binder , into a different yeast cell , and , once those cells had manufactured the binders , added the viral spikes .
To see if the binders had attached to the spikes , he ran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by one , looking for subtle signatures in their fluorescence .
A few of the binders did pretty well .
This was the process ’ s first step .
In the second , Cao subjected the most promising candidates to “ site-saturation mutagenesis ” —a directed-evolution technique .
He swapped out the first amino acid of each candidate for a different one , creating nineteen alternate versions .
He repeated this process for the second amino acid , then the third , and so on .
Then he ordered another batch of DNA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and tested them .
Certain single-site mutations worked better than others ; he created a third set of proteins , combining the best ones .
These proteins were what he and Goreshnik were about to produce .
During our video chat , Goreshnik held up two small tubes containing white powder : the dried DNA strands .
Cao raised a flask of yeast cells , into which the DNA would go .
For around three hours , Goreshnik mixed the DNA fragments with other chemicals , then ran them through a PCR machine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
She purified the results , then multiplied and purified them again .
“ There ’ s lots of walking and a lot of pipetting , ” she said .
Eventually , she showed me a small container : “ All that work , and at the end we get just thirty microlitres of liquid in a tube , ” she said .
Later that night , Cao would introduce the DNA to the yeast cells , which together would make the binding proteins over the course of the next twenty-four hours .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ addition to making proteins that bound to SARS-CoV-2 , they could refine their process so that more of it could be done with Rosetta .
“ The final goal is just to order one design , and it works , ” Cao said .
Ideally , the de-novo protein wouldn ’ t just bind to its target strongly and specifically—it would do so in exactly the way predicted by the software .

Protein-folding software has two main components: a “sampling method” and an “energy function.” The sampler tries different starting places for the golf ball; the energy function aims to direct it downhill. From the beginning, Rosetta, drawing on Baker’s lab experiments, was good at both tasks. It successfully predicted protein folds. But it achieved its singular position in the field because of tweaks and additions made, over the years, by the larger community of researchers, which honed the software’s precision and extended its capabilities. “Every new generation of students is motivated to contribute,” Baker said. “They share in the progress and benefits—including a very luxurious, all-expenses meeting and reunion once a year.”
In the nineteen-seventies, the pioneers of protein design worked by building physical models of their amino-acid chains. William DeGrado, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, coined the term “de novo” protein design in the nineteen-eighties; he recalled, “I was told it was going to be impossible quite a bit.” Protein design is a two-way street: you must figure out how to predict a shape from a sequence and also find the right sequence for a desired shape. It’s a give-and-take, with the overarching goal of finding a shape that does something useful, such as binding, antibody-like, to a virus. A protein designer might start by taking natural proteins and tweaking them. She might also use a system of directed evolution, in which large collections of proteins are tested, selected for certain properties, and then mutated, over and over, until the right traits emerge. (Refining this process is what won Arnold her Nobel Prize.)
Thanks to improved computational tools, including Rosetta, and faster methods for making and testing proteins, de-novo design has begun to show real promise. “It’s amazing how much progress has been made, and how it’s just accelerating so rapidly,” DeGrado said. Baker agreed that progress was speeding up. “The fact that we’re spinning out a couple of companies a year is kind of remarkable,” he said. His lab’s work on COVID-19 has convinced him that the grail is almost within reach. “The hope is that the next time there’s an outbreak, within two days, we’ll have models of candidates,” he told me.
Broadly speaking, new advances in protein design have clustered in three main areas. The first is “binding”—the construction of proteins that adhere tightly to biological targets. In May, I spent a Friday night video-chatting with Inna Goreshnik, a research scientist at I.P.D., as she carried out part of an experiment with Longxing Cao, a postdoc. (I.P.D. occupies the top two floors of its building, and is home to around a hundred and thirty scientists, seventy of whom work in Baker’s lab.) Goreshnik stood at a lab bench in a striped sweater and face mask. “This is very stressful,” she said, as she carried out the calculations needed to prepare the samples. “I usually don’t have anyone watching me do math.”
Their target was SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Earlier, Cao had identified a vulnerable spot on the virus’s spike protein—a kind of grappling hook on its outer shell which enables it to invade cells. His goal was to design “binder” proteins that would adhere to that particular spot on the spike, thereby disabling its function. Rosetta contained a precise model of the spike; Cao had written scripts that used that model to generate, de novo, binders that might work. It was as though, given the measurements of a hand, Rosetta were designing a glove. The program ended up suggesting nearly a hundred thousand possible binders, most between fifty-five and eighty-eight amino acids long. For a few thousand dollars, Cao hired a biotech company to produce DNA strands—synthetic genes—that could instruct cells to build those binders. He then introduced each synthetic gene, encoding a unique binder, into a different yeast cell, and, once those cells had manufactured the binders, added the viral spikes. To see if the binders had attached to the spikes, he ran the cells past a laser, one by one, looking for subtle signatures in their fluorescence. A few of the binders did pretty well.
This was the process’s first step. In the second, Cao subjected the most promising candidates to “site-saturation mutagenesis”—a directed-evolution technique. He swapped out the first amino acid of each candidate for a different one, creating nineteen alternate versions. He repeated this process for the second amino acid, then the third, and so on. Then he ordered another batch of DNA that could make these mutated proteins, and tested them. Certain single-site mutations worked better than others; he created a third set of proteins, combining the best ones. These proteins were what he and Goreshnik were about to produce. During our video chat, Goreshnik held up two small tubes containing white powder: the dried DNA strands. Cao raised a flask of yeast cells, into which the DNA would go.
For around three hours, Goreshnik mixed the DNA fragments with other chemicals, then ran them through a PCR machine, which multiplied and sewed them together. She purified the results, then multiplied and purified them again. “There’s lots of walking and a lot of pipetting,” she said. Eventually, she showed me a small container: “All that work, and at the end we get just thirty microlitres of liquid in a tube,” she said. Later that night, Cao would introduce the DNA to the yeast cells, which together would make the binding proteins over the course of the next twenty-four hours. Goreshnik and Cao hoped that, in addition to making proteins that bound to SARS-CoV-2, they could refine their process so that more of it could be done with Rosetta. “The final goal is just to order one design, and it works,” Cao said. Ideally, the de-novo protein wouldn’t just bind to its target strongly and specifically—it would do so in exactly the way predicted by the software.
A similar process was used to create the flu-binding protein described at the beginning of this article; it was first revealed in a paper published in Nature, in 2017. The process was also used to design Neo-2/15, a cancer drug being developed by a company called Neoleukin, which Baker spun off from his lab (and in which he retains an ownership stake). Neo-2/15, the de-novo protein design currently closest to coming to market, is a new version of a signalling molecule called interleukin-2 (IL-2), which is created naturally by the immune system. IL-2 attaches to receptors on white blood cells, supercharging their response. Certain kinds of cancer patients can benefit from high doses of IL-2, but the treatment carries risks: the molecule binds to three different receptors, and one of those, if overstimulated, can unleash a toxic response in the body. Researchers have tried using directed evolution to mutate IL-2 so that it binds only to the nontoxic receptors; it hasn’t worked. Last year, Baker and his collaborators used Rosetta to design a new protein with the desired binding. Their protein is only distantly related to human-produced IL-2, and has successfully treated mice with skin and colon cancer.
Baker has likened de-novo protein design to the jump from the Stone Age to the Iron Age: instead of carving tools out of whatever we find in nature, we’ll be able to cast our inventions in whatever shape we wish. I asked him how close we were to the Iron Age. “The test is going to be later this year,” he said, referring to the clinical trials for Neo-2/15. “Then we’ll really see what de-novo-designed proteins do inside people.” Recently, Science published the results of the study I’d observed over video chat. Two of the SARS-CoV-2 antiviral proteins that the group had designed were several times more potent than the best monoclonal antibodies currently in development.
The second main area of progress in protein design has to do with self-assembly—the creation of small proteins that join together to make something larger. Here, too, I.P.D. has made a contribution. In a paper published in Science, in 2016, Baker’s lab reported the development of a protein-based icosahedron—a twenty-sided geometric shape, like a die for Dungeons & Dragons. The icosahedron was built from twenty “trimers” and twelve “pentamers”—proteins made of three and five smaller proteins, respectively. The component proteins had been built by bacteria, according to DNA instructions; they were then dissolved in a solution and, while floating around, joined together of their own accord, to create the symmetrical forms that Rosetta had predicted. A protein with such a shape—which is easy to build and roomy inside, with many useful vertices—could carry medicinal cargo through the body; it could also be studded with bits of virus, and, therefore, become a vaccine. (Immunologists have found that, when antigens form a repeating pattern—as they would on the surface of an icosahedron—they tend to stimulate a stronger immune response.)
Last year, Neil King’s lab at the I.P.D. produced such a vaccine: an icosahedron, or “nanoparticle,” arrayed with proteins from respiratory syncytial virus (R.S.V.), the leading cause of infant mortality after malaria. In animals, the new vaccine was ten times as effective as one in which viral proteins floated freely, on their own. A spinoff company, Icosavax, is now developing the R.S.V. vaccine further, with fifty-one million dollars in Series A financing; King, who was a postdoc in Baker’s lab and now leads the I.P.D.’s vaccine efforts, advises Icosavax. (Both he and Baker retain ownership stakes.) He is also working with the National Institutes of Health to use the same technology for a universal flu vaccine and a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. Last month, on the Web site bioRxiv, he posted a “preprint”—a paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed—on the first SARS-CoV-2 results. The lab had vaccinated mice with a self-assembling protein nanoparticle on which sixty copies of the key part of the coronavirus’s spike protein had been embedded; in response, the mice produced ten times as many antibodies as they’d made when given a vaccine containing spike proteins alone. The antibodies made in response to the nanoparticle were also more powerful: they targeted multiple spots on the spike.
Vaccines aren’t the only molecular tools that can be self-assembled. In another project, the results of which were published last year, in Nature, Baker’s lab designed proteins that align with ions on the surface of mica to form a honeycomb pattern. Scientists think that such a latticework could act as a water or air filter. But the process—in which a mineral substrate is used to assemble proteins in an ordered way—could also be reversed. “We want to flip it over, and use a protein scaffold to control the assembly of a mineral,” Harley Pyles, a postdoc in Baker’s lab, said. Such a scaffold could allow scientists to turn calcium carbonate, also known as limestone, into an environmentally friendly replacement for cement, or to transform zinc oxide—used often in lotions, food supplements, and plastics—into a material for solar cells. I asked Pyles if all projects required as much trial and error as the medical molecules. “Some problems are more push-button at this point,” he said. Building a protein that binds to a virus is hard; the virus has evolved to be slippery. If you control both sides of the interaction, however—designing proteins that bind to each other—you can move much faster.
The third area of progress has to do with functionality: the creation of proteins with flexible, moving parts. Sarel Fleishman uses Rosetta to design proteins defined not just by their shape but by their functions. They are too large to design from scratch; he builds them by changing designs found in nature. Still, the proteins contain so many mutations—sometimes more than a hundred each—that they no longer resemble anything that biochemists might find in a regular cell; if the proteins were houses, they would have been thoroughly renovated. Recently, Fleishman’s lab redesigned a naturally occurring enzyme that breaks down nerve agents, such as cyclosarin and Russian VX, similar to the one used against the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny. The original enzyme, PTE, is too slow to be of much use, so Fleishman’s lab ran it through an algorithm that it developed called PROSS (Protein Repair One Stop Shop), which figures out how to redesign proteins so that they’re more stable and effective. Most proteins designed through evolution occur in a number of variations; PROSS analyzes the variations to find the most common amino acids at each of their positions. The algorithm, working on the theory that the more commonly evolved variants have greater stability, then uses Rosetta to arrive at an improved version of the protein. After applying PROSS to the PTE enzyme, Fleishman’s lab used another of its algorithms, FuncLib, to select the best candidates for testing. In animals, the resulting proteins were thousands of times more efficient than PTE at metabolizing cyclosarin—fast enough to be useful in the real world. (Proteins that have been stabilized become not only more powerful but hardier: Fleishman’s lab has also used PROSS to improve a malaria vaccine so that it can hold its form without refrigeration.) Fleishman runs PROSS and FuncLib on academic Web servers that anyone can access; other labs are now using the software. “We see papers coming out from labs I’ve never heard of, and working on enzymes I’ve never heard of,” he said. People plug in problems they’ve been attacking for a decade, and the algorithms just work.
Scott Boyken, a former postdoc in Baker’s lab, has designed, from scratch, proteins with tiny moving parts. One project, published in Science last year, tackles the problem of “endosomal escape.” When a drug or protein enters a cell, the cell wraps it in a membrane called an endosome; the endosome makes it harder for the drug to penetrate the cell’s inner reaches. “That membrane barrier has evolved for the last three billion years to prevent you from crossing it,” King told me. “It is a formidable challenge. But it’s one that we know proteins can solve.” Some viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, cross the endosomal barrier to replicate.
To create his moving proteins, Boyken used a Rosetta module he’d written called HBNet, which allows him to build with hydrogen bonds, chemical connections that are sometimes sensitive to acidity. Because endosomes create an acidic environment, Boyken designed a protein that cracks open only at a particular pH. When the protein opens, it unsheathes molecular coils that have the ability to disrupt the endosomal membrane. A drug attached to such a protein could slip through the bars of the intracellular prison.
In more speculative work, published in Science in April, Boyken and his colleagues designed protein logic gates—equivalents to the “AND,” “OR,” and “NOT” gates at the heart of computer circuitry. They have also created a protein-based equivalent of swinging robotic arms, which they can use to precisely program new biological functions into cells. In work published in Science last month, they used the arms to build logic gates and switches on the surfaces of cells; the system looked for combinations of signs which suggested that the cells were cancerous—molecules A and B, but not C—and, if it found them, summoned an immune response. “This is a whole new field,” Boyken said. “It’s going to revolutionize how we engineer biology.”
The field of protein design has been built by a vast community of scientists, each contributing a part. In 2005, Baker expanded the size of the community by releasing a program called Rosetta@home, through which he invited anyone to help solve the protein-folding problem. Download it, and your computer can use its spare C.P.U. cycles to process proteins, displaying its work in progress as a screen saver.
In the year after its release, thousands of people downloaded Rosetta@home. Some grew frustrated: watching their screen savers, they spotted folding solutions that their computers stubbornly missed. Human beings, it turned out, have intuitions about the 3-D world that software lacks. In response, in 2008, Baker added a new feature to Rosetta: a game called Foldit, in which players compete to see who can predict a protein’s fold the best. In one competition, four hundred and sixty-nine Foldit players from around the world predicted a protein structure better than a class of undergrads, a pair of trained crystallographers, and the Rosetta folding algorithm.
Recently, I downloaded Foldit, which presents a rotating set of challenges to players, and started working my way through the introductory puzzles. The program showed me an increasingly complex set of three-dimensional structures, with bundles of ribbon, corkscrews, and wire representing the parts of proteins. The structures were not completely folded; little animations indicated protrusions that feared water and had to be rotated inward, or internal clashes that had to be resolved. By clicking and dragging, I could bend the over-all backbone this way or that, or fiddle with the little sidechains. I could also click buttons to “shake” or “wiggle” the molecule, perhaps jostling the golf ball into a lower energy state. A score indicated how close I was to perfection. I found Foldit frustrating, like chipping a ball around a course without knowing where the hole was. Still, I could see how others might find it engaging, even addictive, like a Rubik’s Cube, or golf.
Last year, Baker’s lab reported that Foldit players were also adept at designing proteins. The program had given them a monotonous chain of one repeating amino acid. They could fold it up, or replace any acid with a different one—essentially, they could throw spaghetti at the wall. There were very few constraints on what they could design; the challenge, of course, is that a vast majority of sequences don’t fold up into a stable structure. In the end, four thousand players designed fifty-six proteins deemed successful. In doing so, they used a more diverse set of exploration strategies than Rosetta uses on its own. “Protein design is this very open-ended problem,” Brian Koepnick, the scientist who runs the Foldit project, said. “The creativity of citizen scientists can do things that we can’t do with normal protein-design programs.” Since the pandemic began, Foldit, has asked them to predict the shapes of various coronavirus proteins, and to design new binders for coronavirus targets. Usage has skyrocketed. Some power users have written scripts to automate parts of the design process. I.P.D. is now testing some of their work in the lab.


newyorker--2020-09-18--The 2020 National Book Awards Longlist: Fiction

This week , The New Yorker announced the longlists for the 2020 National Book Awards .
Earlier , we presented the lists for Young People ’ s Literature , Translated Literature , Poetry , and Nonfiction .
Douglas Stuart ’ s novel “ Shuggie Bain , ” which traces the life of a boy with an alcoholic mother , is a queer coming-of-age story , an intimate study of familial bonds , and , in the author ’ s words , a “ love story to Glasgow , ” the city where he grew up .
“ Shuggie Bain ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ longlist for this year ’ s National Book Award for Fiction .
“ The Secret Lives of Church Ladies , ” a story collection by Deesha Philyaw , narrates experiences of Black women across regions and generations , mapping desire and friendship within the confines of religious communities .
“ A Burning , ” Megha Majumdar ’ s novel set in present-day India , begins with a terrorist attack at a train station and unfurls into a complex story of poverty , corruption , and injustice .
Other contenders include Brit Bennett ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which follows a pair of twins , both racially ambiguous Black women , whose lives diverge when one chooses to pass as white ; Charles Yu ’ s “ Interior Chinatown , ” a satirical novel that skewers Hollywood ’ s hackneyed depictions of Asians ; and Rumaan Alam ’ s “ Leave the World Behind , ” about two families , one Black and one white , who find themselves stranded in a rental vacation home when a blackout shuts down New York City .
Lydia Millet is the only nominee whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ award .
The full list is below .
The judges for the category this year are Cristina Henríquez , the author of “ The Book of Unknown Americans ” ; Keaton Patterson , of Brazos Bookstore , in Houston ; Laird Hunt , the author of “ Zorrie , ” who teaches at Brown University ; Rebecca Makkai , whose novel “ The Great Believers ” was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize ; and Roxane Gay , the author of “ Bad Feminist ” and “ @ @ @

This week, The New Yorker announced the longlists for the 2020 National Book Awards. Earlier, we presented the lists for Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, and Nonfiction.
Douglas Stuart’s novel “Shuggie Bain,” which traces the life of a boy with an alcoholic mother, is a queer coming-of-age story, an intimate study of familial bonds, and, in the author’s words, a “love story to Glasgow,” the city where he grew up. “Shuggie Bain” is one of three débuts on the longlist for this year’s National Book Award for Fiction. “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” a story collection by Deesha Philyaw, narrates experiences of Black women across regions and generations, mapping desire and friendship within the confines of religious communities. “A Burning,” Megha Majumdar’s novel set in present-day India, begins with a terrorist attack at a train station and unfurls into a complex story of poverty, corruption, and injustice.
Other contenders include Brit Bennett’s “The Vanishing Half,” which follows a pair of twins, both racially ambiguous Black women, whose lives diverge when one chooses to pass as white; Charles Yu’s “Interior Chinatown,” a satirical novel that skewers Hollywood’s hackneyed depictions of Asians; and Rumaan Alam’s “Leave the World Behind,” about two families, one Black and one white, who find themselves stranded in a rental vacation home when a blackout shuts down New York City. Lydia Millet is the only nominee whose work has been previously long-listed for the award. The full list is below.
Rumaan Alam, “Leave the World Behind”
Ecco / HarperCollins Publishers
Christopher Beha, “The Index of Self-Destructive Acts”
Tin House Books
Brit Bennett, “The Vanishing Half”
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House
Randall Kenan, “If I Had Two Wings”
W. W. Norton & Company
Megha Majumdar, “A Burning”
Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House
Lydia Millet, “A Children’s Bible”
W. W. Norton & Company
Deesha Philyaw, “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies”
West Virginia University Press
Douglas Stuart, “Shuggie Bain”
Grove Press / Grove Atlantic
Vanessa Veselka, “The Great Offshore Grounds”
Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House
Charles Yu, “Interior Chinatown”
Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House
The judges for the category this year are Cristina Henríquez, the author of “The Book of Unknown Americans”; Keaton Patterson, of Brazos Bookstore, in Houston; Laird Hunt, the author of “Zorrie,” who teaches at Brown University; Rebecca Makkai, whose novel “The Great Believers” was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; and Roxane Gay, the author of “Bad Feminist” and “Hunger.”