newyorker--2020-10-12--The United States of Dolly Parton

The United States of Dolly Parton

The country-music establishment can be about as partisan as they come , a rope line of old-school apple-pie values and unquestioning patriotism .
But Parton is a true diplomat .
A word like “ crossover ” scarcely encompasses a singer admired by Vanna White ( who says Parton is her role model because she “ hasn ’ t been affected by show business ” ) , Björk ( who has called Parton ’ s twanged crystal timbre “ immaculate ” ) , and Nicki Minaj ( who nods Parton ’ s way in a guest verse on Drake ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A Dolly Parton concert is like a local census , bringing together peoples across lines of race , gender , sexuality , and , miraculously , political affiliation .
Parton ’ s politics , in the two-party sense , are a secret so well kept that her reticence on this score has become as integral to the living monument of her as her blond coiffure .
In 1980 , she had a starring role in the movie “ 9 to 5 , ” a hit comedy about mutinous women office workers which was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that title , but she carefully disavowed any “ women ’ s lib ” : “ Not that I ’ m not for rights for everybody , ” she told Rolling Stone .
“ I ’ m just sayin ’ I didn ’ t want to get involved in a political thing .
It ’ s just a funny , funny show.
” In 2014 , an interviewer brought up the famous girl-boss manual by the Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg , and asked whether Parton had ever “ leaned in.
” Parton deflected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a laugh : “ I ’ ve leaned over .
I ’ ve leaned forward .
I don ’ t know what ‘ leaned in ’ is .
Lean in to God.
” In the summer of 2016 , she caused a small stir among her fans when she expressed her willingness , in an interview with the Times , to throw in her lot with Hillary Clinton “ if she gets it.
” But those who were either pleased or incensed by this answer had assumed too much .
Parton clarified that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was voting for , and she said that if she ever found an interest in politics she ’ d run herself : “ I ’ ve got the hair for it , it ’ s huge , and they could always use more boobs in the race.
” Humor indelibly choreographs Dolly ’ s two-step around the sort of culturally warred-over topics that trip up so many celebrities .
If the shtick is slick , it doesn ’ t feel so , only polished , with a whiff of old-fashioned etiquette concerning the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with company present .
Another word for this is “ grace , ” helpfully supplied by Sarah Smarsh , the author of “ She Come by It Natural : Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs ” ( Scribner ) .
It ’ s an appropriately evangelic interpretation of Parton ’ s seemingly apolitical poise .
In lieu of taking a stand , Parton walks the walk , binding the country ’ s disparate passions with a better politics—good works and the call of homecoming .
Some of these stories are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brother ) , some harrowing ( her mother ’ s bout with spinal meningitis ) ; others are joyful or funny .
Not a few are all of these things .
One day , Dolly , a small child at the time , trailed a monarch butterfly off the family property and into unknown territory , dreaming of flight .
Lost for hours , she returned home by way of the family milk cow , Bessie .
Holding on to Bessie ’ s collar , Dolly was dragged through the forest , arriving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ greeted by her mother ’ s sobs , which kept rhythm with her mother ’ s switch .
Parton divides her extended family into two categories : toilers and wastrels .
Her father ’ s family , the Partons , were of the usual farming stock ; they worked hard and patiently , knowing that their planning and providence would pay off , as with Aesop ’ s industrious ant .
Her maternal family , the Owenses , were mostly grasshoppers , keener on making music than on making a living—Avie Lee excluded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dreamed up a dazzling future that only sweat , effort , and determination could yield .
Parton ’ s account of her life is short on judgment but long on lessons .
In retrospect , regular clobberings by her brother Denver evince “ a sort of male chauvinism mountain boys don ’ t necessarily grow out of , ” she wrote in her memoir .
( “ They do tend to subdue it somewhat after two or three divorces , ” she adds . )
Granted , there ’ s a special tone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spun into gold .
Her song “ Coat of Many Colors , ” a fan favorite , is based on the true tale of a school-aged Dolly parading about on a too warm day in a homemade coat whose magic no one else saw .
( “ I recall a box of rags that someone gave us / And how my momma put the rags to use.
” ) Resourceful women crop up in many lyrics , their ingenuity dramatized by the deadbeats who depend on them .
Parton ’ s 1969 song @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” puns on the type of man whose giddyup is confined to going to his wife ’ s place of work—and collecting her paycheck—in lieu of holding a job .
“ I know that most of you will know the kind I ’ m talkin ’ about , ” Parton sings .
Who ’ s the “ you ” who understands the deep , unelaborated truths of her songs ?
That ’ s the subject of “ She Come by It Natural.
” Smarsh ’ s first book , “ Heartland : A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the Richest Country on Earth , ” a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award , shares with its successor a concern for America ’ s white country folk , especially the women .
A hardscrabble childhood on a Kansas farm and three university degrees—in English and journalism from the University of Kansas , and an M.F.A .
from Columbia—make Smarsh a bridge of sorts between the jargon-addled theory of high feminism and the women whom such theory is routinely said to forget .
In the course of “ She Come by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Parton ’ s life story are grafted onto those of white working-class women , usually matriarchs within Smarsh ’ s own family—women who , like Parton , might never see themselves in feminist discourse but have been “ living feminism ” all along .
These are women tested by poverty and patriarchy , who do what needs to get done and escape when it ’ s time , even if the fleeing lands them in another bad situation that they ’ ll soon need to escape .
They ’ re women who are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ) or possibly doing wrong ( “ I Can ’ t Be True ” ) , finding a soundtrack to their own loves in “ Love Is Like a Butterfly.
” They are , in Smarsh ’ s view , Parton ’ s muses , with lives resembling the main characters of her jubilant and sad-ass tunes .
Parton is a genius , but all those stories come from somewhere .
And , though Parton left and made a mint , the women she might ’ ve been kept on living .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and , for the most part , their contributions to progressive consciousness have gone unsung except by Parton .
Her adolescence was spent being driven back and forth to Knoxville , occasionally busking for “ nickels and dimes , ” or so goes a song of that name which she co-wrote with her brother Floyd years later .
Her first swings at Nashville landed her , at age thirteen , a slot at the Grand Ole Opry , courtesy of the Cajun artist Jimmy C. Newman , a friend of friends .
Money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other spots was spent on the customary teen-age fare—clothes , makeup , and peroxide—and local celebrity attracted envy at school , where she was sometimes bullied .
The morning after graduation , Parton boarded a Greyhound in hot pursuit of the usual dream .
By the time she was nineteen , she had a record deal ; she recorded a number of singles , and wrote songs that better-known musicians recorded .
At twenty , she got married to Carl Dean , who had a road-paving business .
( They ’ re still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the road-paving business . )
Parton credits her uncle Bill Owens , the same maternal uncle who ushered her into her first radio gig , with her big break in Nashville .
It was Uncle Bill who haunted promoters and publishers , who drove the miles and knocked on the doors that led to the string of singles that landed her in the orbit of Porter Wagoner .
Wagoner , another farmer ’ s kid turned musician , had become the host of a syndicated weekly TV show , and signed her on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eye-popping sixty thousand dollars a year .
Lean and glittering in his Nudie suits ( likely designed by the quietly iconic Manuel Cuevas ) , and two decades her elder , Wagoner became , in the singsong language of a country duet , the sometime father , sometime lover of his partner .
Parton has likened their seven-year working relationship to a marriage—affectionate , contentious , heated , volatile , maddening—but neither of them ever confirmed rumors that the relationship actually had a romantic dimension .
Smarsh gives no such quarter , likening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he argued with Parton about everything from what she sang to what she published and how ) to the dynamics of domestic abuse , particularly in the later years , when his disdain erupted on air during “ The Porter Wagoner Show , ” as though he ’ d sensed that Parton had one foot out the door .
In a 1972 episode , he could be seen telling Parton , who was offstage , to “ shut up , ” losing his trusty smile .
Over the years , he pushed out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bill , reluctant to see another wagon attached to her rising stardom .
Parton herself writes that this period was like indentured servitude—seven years in exchange for the freedom she now enjoys .
“ She Come by It Natural ” finds a feminist origin story in 1973 , when Parton cut the cords between her and Wagoner .
By then , Parton had recorded and released twenty-four studio albums : thirteen solo records , including “ Coat of Many Colors , ” and eleven with Wagoner .
That totalled about a hundred and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own projects , another fifty featuring duos with Wagoner .
After nine years of near-non-stop hustle in Nashville , seven by Wagoner ’ s side , the “ girl singer ” on Wagoner ’ s show had come to outshine her host .
By leaving , she entered the symbolic frequency shared by any woman who has broken free from a chauvinist , whether once tied by a ring , a child , or a contract .
It ’ s a story retold like myth .
One day , Parton walked into Wagoner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ song—a parting gift that turned out to be a gift to herself .
He teared up and let her go , though not without a hell of a legal fight .
The song was “ I Will Always Love You , ” written the day before .
( “ Bittersweet memories / That is all I ’ m taking with me.
” ) The same songwriting session also produced “ Jolene , ” which reached No .
1 on the country-music charts , and so one legend curled into another .
Parton never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and to make something of it .
In a delightful clip that has recently been making the rounds online , from an episode of the short-lived nineteen-eighties variety show “ Dolly , ” Parton leads Patti LaBelle in “ a little rhythm ” sounded , washboard style , from the clacking of their acrylic nails .
Wearing similar puff-sleeved , sparkling black gowns , the two luminaries briefly harmonize a rendition of “ Shortnin ’ Bread , ” the slave folk song , before collapsing into giggles .
The moment can feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see its serious feminine brilliance .
Acrylic nails , disparaged when seen on the hands of performers like Parton or Cardi B , may very well be responsible for some spectacular feats of songwriting .
Not long after the success of “ 9 to 5 , ” Parton became depressed and suicidal .
This period coincided with demoralizing professional experiences—filming the 1982 movie “ The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , ” she was made to feel too fat for her role opposite Burt Reynolds—along with family problems and health issues .
God @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s help .
She trimmed her band and fired her accounting firm ; she had a partial hysterectomy , after being diagnosed with endometriosis .
And she cleared ground for her grandest vision yet , an amusement park of near-Disneyland proportions , situated right in Sevier County .
The year Dollywood opened , 1986 , she was voted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame .
Whatever the ups and downs , the songs never ceased .
“ Even when I was sick , I was always writing , ” she recalls in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ K. Oermann .
“ Yellow Roses , ” from her 1989 album “ White Limozeen , ” released the same year that she had a featured role in “ Steel Magnolias , ” became her tenth No .
1 hit of the decade , the fourth by her own pen—the yellow flower of her first romance has long since “ turned to blue , ” but her love endures .
The eighties and nineties were a time for Parton to renegotiate the place of craft in fame .
She moved from RCA to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ albums—including “ Honky Tonk Angels , ” with Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette—before switching labels again and starting her own , Blue Eye Records .
( A second label , Dolly Records , was launched in 2007 . )
She gave mountain music the most earnest try of her career with her 1999 solo album , “ The Grass Is Blue , ” a pared-down project that won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album , and its 2001 follow-up , “ Little Sparrow.
” Fans had apparently been begging for these albums for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Since I manage myself now and have my own label and can do what I want , why not do it ?
” she said .
In 2005 , when she recorded “ Travelin ’ Thru , ” the theme song for “ Transamerica , ” a film about a trans woman ’ s drive across the country with her son , she courted controversy with a certain segment of her fan base , and received another Oscar nomination for Best Original Song .

Dolly Parton is loved for many reasons—the songwriting, the singing, the industry smarts, the cheeky cracks, the homey manner, the beauty, the verve, the hits. She is also loved for being loved, and loved transcendentally. During a red-hot summer marked in part by toppled monuments to slavery and genocide, a petition arose, directed at Tennessee lawmakers, calling for Parton to be pedestalled instead. “Let’s replace the statues of men who sought to tear this country apart with a monument to the woman who has worked her entire life to bring us closer together,” the petition proposed, soon gaining some twenty-three thousand signatories.
The country-music establishment can be about as partisan as they come, a rope line of old-school apple-pie values and unquestioning patriotism. But Parton is a true diplomat. A word like “crossover” scarcely encompasses a singer admired by Vanna White (who says Parton is her role model because she “hasn’t been affected by show business”), Björk (who has called Parton’s twanged crystal timbre “immaculate”), and Nicki Minaj (who nods Parton’s way in a guest verse on Drake’s “Make Me Proud”). A Dolly Parton concert is like a local census, bringing together peoples across lines of race, gender, sexuality, and, miraculously, political affiliation.
Parton’s politics, in the two-party sense, are a secret so well kept that her reticence on this score has become as integral to the living monument of her as her blond coiffure. In 1980, she had a starring role in the movie “9 to 5,” a hit comedy about mutinous women office workers which was further buoyed by her Oscar-nominated song of that title, but she carefully disavowed any “women’s lib”: “Not that I’m not for rights for everybody,” she told Rolling Stone. “I’m just sayin’ I didn’t want to get involved in a political thing. It’s just a funny, funny show.” In 2014, an interviewer brought up the famous girl-boss manual by the Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, and asked whether Parton had ever “leaned in.” Parton deflected the veiled test of feminist cred with a laugh: “I’ve leaned over. I’ve leaned forward. I don’t know what ‘leaned in’ is. Lean in to God.” In the summer of 2016, she caused a small stir among her fans when she expressed her willingness, in an interview with the Times, to throw in her lot with Hillary Clinton “if she gets it.” But those who were either pleased or incensed by this answer had assumed too much. Parton clarified that she hadn’t decided whom she was voting for, and she said that if she ever found an interest in politics she’d run herself: “I’ve got the hair for it, it’s huge, and they could always use more boobs in the race.”
Humor indelibly choreographs Dolly’s two-step around the sort of culturally warred-over topics that trip up so many celebrities. If the shtick is slick, it doesn’t feel so, only polished, with a whiff of old-fashioned etiquette concerning the subjects one doesn’t talk about with company present. Another word for this is “grace,” helpfully supplied by Sarah Smarsh, the author of “She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs” (Scribner). It’s an appropriately evangelic interpretation of Parton’s seemingly apolitical poise. In lieu of taking a stand, Parton walks the walk, binding the country’s disparate passions with a better politics—good works and the call of homecoming.
Parton was born in 1946, the fourth child of twelve, on her family’s small farm in a “holler” (country for “hollow”), in Sevier County, Tennessee. Her father, Lee, worked as a sharecropper but acquired his own land when Dolly turned five; alongside his wife, Avie Lee, he raised tobacco and livestock. In the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, the Partons’ poverty was acute but unremarkable. Luxuries—electricity, plumbing, store-bought anything—were nonexistent or scarce. Still, the family took care of its own. This period would become the source of anecdotes one could call Dollyisms, spangled throughout concerts and interviews, committed to memory by fans and followers. “I have often joked that we had ‘two rooms and a path, and running water, if you were willing to run to get it,’ ” Parton wrote in her 1994 autobiography, “Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business.”
Some of these stories are sad (the death of a newborn brother), some harrowing (her mother’s bout with spinal meningitis); others are joyful or funny. Not a few are all of these things. One day, Dolly, a small child at the time, trailed a monarch butterfly off the family property and into unknown territory, dreaming of flight. Lost for hours, she returned home by way of the family milk cow, Bessie. Holding on to Bessie’s collar, Dolly was dragged through the forest, arriving home bloodied and bruised. She was greeted by her mother’s sobs, which kept rhythm with her mother’s switch.
Parton divides her extended family into two categories: toilers and wastrels. Her father’s family, the Partons, were of the usual farming stock; they worked hard and patiently, knowing that their planning and providence would pay off, as with Aesop’s industrious ant. Her maternal family, the Owenses, were mostly grasshoppers, keener on making music than on making a living—Avie Lee excluded. Parton, blending these legacies, dreamed up a dazzling future that only sweat, effort, and determination could yield.
Parton’s account of her life is short on judgment but long on lessons. In retrospect, regular clobberings by her brother Denver evince “a sort of male chauvinism mountain boys don’t necessarily grow out of,” she wrote in her memoir. (“They do tend to subdue it somewhat after two or three divorces,” she adds.) Granted, there’s a special tone that arises when your hardships have been spun into gold. Her song “Coat of Many Colors,” a fan favorite, is based on the true tale of a school-aged Dolly parading about on a too warm day in a homemade coat whose magic no one else saw. (“I recall a box of rags that someone gave us / And how my momma put the rags to use.”) Resourceful women crop up in many lyrics, their ingenuity dramatized by the deadbeats who depend on them. Parton’s 1969 song “He’s a Go Getter” puns on the type of man whose giddyup is confined to going to his wife’s place of work—and collecting her paycheck—in lieu of holding a job. “I know that most of you will know the kind I’m talkin’ about,” Parton sings.
Who’s the “you” who understands the deep, unelaborated truths of her songs? That’s the subject of “She Come by It Natural.” Smarsh’s first book, “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth,” a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award, shares with its successor a concern for America’s white country folk, especially the women. A hardscrabble childhood on a Kansas farm and three university degrees—in English and journalism from the University of Kansas, and an M.F.A. from Columbia—make Smarsh a bridge of sorts between the jargon-addled theory of high feminism and the women whom such theory is routinely said to forget. In the course of “She Come by It Natural,” the particulars of Parton’s life story are grafted onto those of white working-class women, usually matriarchs within Smarsh’s own family—women who, like Parton, might never see themselves in feminist discourse but have been “living feminism” all along. These are women tested by poverty and patriarchy, who do what needs to get done and escape when it’s time, even if the fleeing lands them in another bad situation that they’ll soon need to escape. They’re women who are wronged (“Dagger Through the Heart”) or possibly doing wrong (“I Can’t Be True”), finding a soundtrack to their own loves in “Love Is Like a Butterfly.” They are, in Smarsh’s view, Parton’s muses, with lives resembling the main characters of her jubilant and sad-ass tunes. Parton is a genius, but all those stories come from somewhere. And, though Parton left and made a mint, the women she might’ve been kept on living. They understand Parton like few can, and, for the most part, their contributions to progressive consciousness have gone unsung except by Parton.
Those songs started early. When she was five, she came up with “Little Tiny Tasseltop,” a pair of sung couplets about a corncob doll with corn-silk tassels for hair. “Since I have been able to form words, I have been able to rhyme them,” she wrote in her autobiography. “I could catch on to anything that had a rhythm”—peas snapping, honking geese—“and make a song to go with it.” Out of so many children, it was Dolly who was given an uncle’s guitar; another of Avie Lee’s brothers introduced her to the local entrepreneur-slash-radio-personality who gave Parton her first broadcast gig, at the age of ten, on “The Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour,” in Knoxville. Young as she was, she had for years already done the amateur circuit—on the porch or atop a woodpile or at Sunday service, strumming somebody’s banjo or a mandolin fashioned with piano strings.
Her adolescence was spent being driven back and forth to Knoxville, occasionally busking for “nickels and dimes,” or so goes a song of that name which she co-wrote with her brother Floyd years later. Her first swings at Nashville landed her, at age thirteen, a slot at the Grand Ole Opry, courtesy of the Cajun artist Jimmy C. Newman, a friend of friends. Money saved from the Cas Walker show and other spots was spent on the customary teen-age fare—clothes, makeup, and peroxide—and local celebrity attracted envy at school, where she was sometimes bullied. The morning after graduation, Parton boarded a Greyhound in hot pursuit of the usual dream.
By the time she was nineteen, she had a record deal; she recorded a number of singles, and wrote songs that better-known musicians recorded. At twenty, she got married to Carl Dean, who had a road-paving business. (They’re still married; he’s out of the road-paving business.) Parton credits her uncle Bill Owens, the same maternal uncle who ushered her into her first radio gig, with her big break in Nashville. It was Uncle Bill who haunted promoters and publishers, who drove the miles and knocked on the doors that led to the string of singles that landed her in the orbit of Porter Wagoner.
Wagoner, another farmer’s kid turned musician, had become the host of a syndicated weekly TV show, and signed her on as a singing sidekick, for an eye-popping sixty thousand dollars a year. Lean and glittering in his Nudie suits (likely designed by the quietly iconic Manuel Cuevas), and two decades her elder, Wagoner became, in the singsong language of a country duet, the sometime father, sometime lover of his partner. Parton has likened their seven-year working relationship to a marriage—affectionate, contentious, heated, volatile, maddening—but neither of them ever confirmed rumors that the relationship actually had a romantic dimension.
Cartoon by Brendan Loper Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Smarsh gives no such quarter, likening Wagoner’s control and possessiveness (he argued with Parton about everything from what she sang to what she published and how) to the dynamics of domestic abuse, particularly in the later years, when his disdain erupted on air during “The Porter Wagoner Show,” as though he’d sensed that Parton had one foot out the door. In a 1972 episode, he could be seen telling Parton, who was offstage, to “shut up,” losing his trusty smile. Over the years, he pushed out other male business partners, including Uncle Bill, reluctant to see another wagon attached to her rising stardom. Parton herself writes that this period was like indentured servitude—seven years in exchange for the freedom she now enjoys.


newyorker--2020-10-12--How We Lie to Ourselves About History

How We Lie to Ourselves About History

I first started listening to the podcast “ You ’ re Wrong About , ” a cultural-history show hosted by the journalists Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall , because of a T-shirt .
Late last year , while lazily strolling along the social-media promenade , I came across a woman wearing a boxy T with a cheeky , provocative illustration on the front .
The design , which was drawn by the artist Aude White , featured an X-Y axis , along with the faces of eight notable women who had made headlines over the last six decades .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ You ’ re Wrong About , ’ ” and it sorted the women into four categories : Mistreated by Politics ( Anita Hill , Monica Lewinsky ) , Mistreated by Media ( Kitty Genovese , Anna Nicole Smith ) , Mistreated by Capitalism ( Tonya Harding , Janet Jackson ) , and Mistreated by Religion ( Tammy Faye Bakker , Terri Schiavo ) .
At first , the shirt seemed like yet another piece of Girlboss merchandise , an attempt at hagiography that flattened women into symbols .
But the categories intrigued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lewinsky had been mistreated , from her own public reclamation of her story through articles and activism .
But I was less familiar with the story of , say , Kitty Genovese—I had only a hazy fable in my head , of a woman who was murdered in New York City while dozens of apathetic strangers watched .
As it turns out , I was wrong .
Genovese , a twenty-eight-year-old whom Marshall introduces as “ a real-life woman who became a metaphor , ” was fatally stabbed , by Winston Moseley , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1964—but the narrative , pushed by a hyperbolic New York Times headline , about how thirty-seven people witnessed the attack and did nothing , was patently false .
In fact , only a few neighbors were able to see the crime , and none saw it from beginning to end .
Other neighbors called the police after hearing screams , and one witness , a valiant , petite woman named Sophia Farrar , immediately dashed downstairs to help , knowing full well that she might be rushing into a dangerous situation .
Farrar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrived , an act that directly contradicts the fearmongering media angle that the victim was left to die alone .
For Marshall , the frenzy around Genovese ’ s death became a tool used to scare women about the dangers of moving through the city independently , and to scare the broader public about the terrors that new freedoms , forged by the civil-rights movement , might unleash upon an urban populace .
“ We used a story about what was wrong with a society we already had to make us feel afraid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says in the podcast .
“ Once again , society figured out that it was sick , and decided that the antidote was more poison.
” “ You ’ re Wrong About , ” which began airing in May of 2018 , has gradually climbed to the top of the history-podcast charts on iTunes , and now nets around 2.5 million downloads each month .
The show works—and never feels preachy—because it follows a novel format .
While many history podcasts feature one or two hosts reciting a litany of facts , like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , thirty-eight , and Marshall , thirty-two , have taken a more exploratory approach .
After they choose their subject—topics have included urban legends , infamous cultural figures , and tabloid fodder such as the Satanic Panic of the nineteen-eighties—one host usually does a mountain of research , and the other comes into the episode completely blind , with only their assumptions and memories to go on .
The result is a sort of Schadenfreude theatre ; you hear someone get absolutely schooled , in real time , as they make the journey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent episode , for example , Marshall took on the task of explaining the story behind “ The Stepford Wives , ” the 1972 horror novel by Ira Levin about submissive housewives who may or may not be mechanical fembots .
She begins by asking Hobbes what he knows about the book .
He thinks that it was published sometime in the fifties , and that “ all of the housewives are either robots or aliens , I can never remember.
” Marshall simply laughs .
“ You ’ re Wrong About ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hosts , after some acidic banter , begin evicting the untruths that have been occupying our brains .
And yet the show ’ s allure goes beyond mere fact-checking , which has become , by now , just another genre of entertainment .
Fifteen years ago , in the first episode of “ The Colbert Report , ” Stephen Colbert coined the term “ truthiness , ” to distinguish those who “ know with their heart ” from “ those who think with their head.
” The deeper theme of “ You ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we transcend it , or whether we are doomed , for eternity , to subordinate facts to the iron force of our instincts .
Getting the Genovese story “ right , ” for example , is a more complex process than debunking it ; it ’ s about wading through what felt right , at the time , and why .
When the murder took place , the horrors of the Holocaust were gaining further exposure , and many families had left New York City for the suburbs ; readers were primed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was false , about insidious apathy to violence .
When Marshall explains what we got “ wrong ” about the event , it is not an indictment of fake news .
Instead , she is interrogating the “ truthiness ” that elevated one narrative in the past , and that allows us to seek out revisions of that narrative—her own take on the Genovese story , for example—in the present .
The show is less about facts than it is a meta-narrative about how we absorb them .
If , as Joan Didion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in order to live , then “ You ’ re Wrong About ” wants to know why we keep some stories going longer than others .
To the extent that “ You ’ re Wrong About ” is a critique of the media , it ’ s also an inside job .
The show began when Hobbes , a writer at HuffPost , sent an e-mail to Marshall in early 2018 .
He had read her searching essays , in publications such as The Believer and BuzzFeed , about subjects as wide-ranging as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Elvis .
Marshall ’ s writing is obsessive ; she picks a popular story , pores over archival sources , and discovers what the public missed during the initial media blitz .
Hobbes , who had used a similar method in his work , proposed re-creating their process in an auditory format .
They recorded the show remotely for five months before meeting for the first time .
The duo fund the podcast on their own , through both donations and merchandise sales ; recent items include masks with slogans like “ Aww @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hobbes often deploys when the dramatic irony in an episode becomes too delicious .
Because Marshall and Hobbes have never partnered with a major production company , and do all of the reporting themselves , the show has earned a kind of cult status among listeners .
In September , it aired its hundredth episode , about the spectre of killer clowns .
What keeps the show fresh is its outlook .
Marshall and Hobbes are endlessly curious about their own blind spots , which they hunt down like truffle pigs set loose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a unique view and tone to the show ; Marshall is more world-weary and sardonic , with a gravelly voice that sounds not unlike the caustic cartoon character Daria Morgendorffer .
Hobbes is excitable and buzzing , often so eager to rattle off information that he speaks in full paragraphs .
Together , they make up a kind of millennial Statler and Waldorf , heckling the shoddy journalism of the past .
But even their response to the media is one of amusement , or droll resignation—they stay far away from the outrage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life .
( Indignation would imply certainty , and certainty would cut against the core of their project . )
In one episode , the hosts discuss the Y2K-bug scare , in which people feared that the year 2000 would cause computer systems—and society at large—to crash .
Hobbes tells Marshall that people often use the subject as a bludgeon .
“ When we ’ re talking about climate change , people will bring up , like , Oh , we were worried about Y2K , too , and that turned out to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ And somebody else will respond to that by saying , No , Y2K is an example of us coming together and fixing a problem.
” After he ’ s done , Marshall playfully clears her throat .
Then she says , “ And , since we have now had two years of doing this show , I am able to extrapolate that perhaps the answer is no one is right.
” It ’ s an apt mission statement for “ You ’ re Wrong About , ” which , despite the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one history podcast I ’ ve heard that assumes the audience is capable of complex thought .
It doesn ’ t try to sift out nuance ; it ’ s a podcast for adults , albeit those who have spent most of their lives telling themselves the wrong stories .
As for the right story—who can say ?
You walk away from every episode of “ You ’ re Wrong About ” with questions , not answers .
What else do we believe is true , just because it sounds correct ?
Can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media manipulation ?
And even if we push back on what we are told , dig for a deeper knowledge , will we find out , in twenty years , that the “ real ” story has changed yet again ?
It ’ s not that Marshall and Hobbes believe that nothing is true ; they have faith in documents , reporting , quotations .
But the very premise of their show , in which they apply old data to a new , unified theory , proves their broader point : that any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and even remade .
They know that there ’ s a seductive aura around the facts that feel true .
And , if they can ’ t sell the feeling , they will , at the very least , try to sell you the T‑shirt .
♦

I first started listening to the podcast “You’re Wrong About,” a cultural-history show hosted by the journalists Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall, because of a T-shirt. Late last year, while lazily strolling along the social-media promenade, I came across a woman wearing a boxy T with a cheeky, provocative illustration on the front. The design, which was drawn by the artist Aude White, featured an X-Y axis, along with the faces of eight notable women who had made headlines over the last six decades. The caption read “The Maligned Women of ‘You’re Wrong About,’ ” and it sorted the women into four categories: Mistreated by Politics (Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky), Mistreated by Media (Kitty Genovese, Anna Nicole Smith), Mistreated by Capitalism (Tonya Harding, Janet Jackson), and Mistreated by Religion (Tammy Faye Bakker, Terri Schiavo). At first, the shirt seemed like yet another piece of Girlboss merchandise, an attempt at hagiography that flattened women into symbols. But the categories intrigued me; I knew very well how Lewinsky had been mistreated, from her own public reclamation of her story through articles and activism. But I was less familiar with the story of, say, Kitty Genovese—I had only a hazy fable in my head, of a woman who was murdered in New York City while dozens of apathetic strangers watched.
As it turns out, I was wrong. Genovese, a twenty-eight-year-old whom Marshall introduces as “a real-life woman who became a metaphor,” was fatally stabbed, by Winston Moseley, in Kew Gardens, Queens, in 1964—but the narrative, pushed by a hyperbolic New York Times headline, about how thirty-seven people witnessed the attack and did nothing, was patently false. In fact, only a few neighbors were able to see the crime, and none saw it from beginning to end. Other neighbors called the police after hearing screams, and one witness, a valiant, petite woman named Sophia Farrar, immediately dashed downstairs to help, knowing full well that she might be rushing into a dangerous situation. Farrar cradled Genovese’s body until aid arrived, an act that directly contradicts the fearmongering media angle that the victim was left to die alone. For Marshall, the frenzy around Genovese’s death became a tool used to scare women about the dangers of moving through the city independently, and to scare the broader public about the terrors that new freedoms, forged by the civil-rights movement, might unleash upon an urban populace. “We used a story about what was wrong with a society we already had to make us feel afraid of that society changing,” she says in the podcast. “Once again, society figured out that it was sick, and decided that the antidote was more poison.”
“You’re Wrong About,” which began airing in May of 2018, has gradually climbed to the top of the history-podcast charts on iTunes, and now nets around 2.5 million downloads each month. The show works—and never feels preachy—because it follows a novel format. While many history podcasts feature one or two hosts reciting a litany of facts, like a staged reading of Wikipedia, Hobbes, thirty-eight, and Marshall, thirty-two, have taken a more exploratory approach. After they choose their subject—topics have included urban legends, infamous cultural figures, and tabloid fodder such as the Satanic Panic of the nineteen-eighties—one host usually does a mountain of research, and the other comes into the episode completely blind, with only their assumptions and memories to go on. The result is a sort of Schadenfreude theatre; you hear someone get absolutely schooled, in real time, as they make the journey from ignorance to insight. In a recent episode, for example, Marshall took on the task of explaining the story behind “The Stepford Wives,” the 1972 horror novel by Ira Levin about submissive housewives who may or may not be mechanical fembots. She begins by asking Hobbes what he knows about the book. He thinks that it was published sometime in the fifties, and that “all of the housewives are either robots or aliens, I can never remember.” Marshall simply laughs. “You’re Wrong About” thrives in these moments, when the hosts, after some acidic banter, begin evicting the untruths that have been occupying our brains.
And yet the show’s allure goes beyond mere fact-checking, which has become, by now, just another genre of entertainment. Fifteen years ago, in the first episode of “The Colbert Report,” Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness,” to distinguish those who “know with their heart” from “those who think with their head.” The deeper theme of “You’re Wrong About” is this divide—how we transcend it, or whether we are doomed, for eternity, to subordinate facts to the iron force of our instincts. Getting the Genovese story “right,” for example, is a more complex process than debunking it; it’s about wading through what felt right, at the time, and why. When the murder took place, the horrors of the Holocaust were gaining further exposure, and many families had left New York City for the suburbs; readers were primed to accept a tale, albeit one that was false, about insidious apathy to violence. When Marshall explains what we got “wrong” about the event, it is not an indictment of fake news. Instead, she is interrogating the “truthiness” that elevated one narrative in the past, and that allows us to seek out revisions of that narrative—her own take on the Genovese story, for example—in the present. The show is less about facts than it is a meta-narrative about how we absorb them. If, as Joan Didion once wrote, we tell ourselves stories in order to live, then “You’re Wrong About” wants to know why we keep some stories going longer than others.
To the extent that “You’re Wrong About” is a critique of the media, it’s also an inside job. The show began when Hobbes, a writer at HuffPost, sent an e-mail to Marshall in early 2018. He had read her searching essays, in publications such as The Believer and BuzzFeed, about subjects as wide-ranging as JonBenét Ramsey, the Titanic, and Elvis. Marshall’s writing is obsessive; she picks a popular story, pores over archival sources, and discovers what the public missed during the initial media blitz. Hobbes, who had used a similar method in his work, proposed re-creating their process in an auditory format. They recorded the show remotely for five months before meeting for the first time. The duo fund the podcast on their own, through both donations and merchandise sales; recent items include masks with slogans like “Aww, sweetie,” a catchphrase that Hobbes often deploys when the dramatic irony in an episode becomes too delicious. Because Marshall and Hobbes have never partnered with a major production company, and do all of the reporting themselves, the show has earned a kind of cult status among listeners. In September, it aired its hundredth episode, about the spectre of killer clowns.
What keeps the show fresh is its outlook. Marshall and Hobbes are endlessly curious about their own blind spots, which they hunt down like truffle pigs set loose in a damp forest. Each brings a unique view and tone to the show; Marshall is more world-weary and sardonic, with a gravelly voice that sounds not unlike the caustic cartoon character Daria Morgendorffer. Hobbes is excitable and buzzing, often so eager to rattle off information that he speaks in full paragraphs. Together, they make up a kind of millennial Statler and Waldorf, heckling the shoddy journalism of the past. But even their response to the media is one of amusement, or droll resignation—they stay far away from the outrage that has become the pattern of public life. (Indignation would imply certainty, and certainty would cut against the core of their project.) In one episode, the hosts discuss the Y2K-bug scare, in which people feared that the year 2000 would cause computer systems—and society at large—to crash. Hobbes tells Marshall that people often use the subject as a bludgeon. “When we’re talking about climate change, people will bring up, like, Oh, we were worried about Y2K, too, and that turned out to be a hoax,” he says. “And somebody else will respond to that by saying, No, Y2K is an example of us coming together and fixing a problem.” After he’s done, Marshall playfully clears her throat. Then she says, “And, since we have now had two years of doing this show, I am able to extrapolate that perhaps the answer is no one is right.”
It’s an apt mission statement for “You’re Wrong About,” which, despite the neatness of its name, is the one history podcast I’ve heard that assumes the audience is capable of complex thought. It doesn’t try to sift out nuance; it’s a podcast for adults, albeit those who have spent most of their lives telling themselves the wrong stories. As for the right story—who can say? You walk away from every episode of “You’re Wrong About” with questions, not answers. What else do we believe is true, just because it sounds correct? Can we ever see through the fog of media manipulation? And even if we push back on what we are told, dig for a deeper knowledge, will we find out, in twenty years, that the “real” story has changed yet again? It’s not that Marshall and Hobbes believe that nothing is true; they have faith in documents, reporting, quotations. But the very premise of their show, in which they apply old data to a new, unified theory, proves their broader point: that any story can be revisited, recast, and even remade. They know that there’s a seductive aura around the facts that feel true. And, if they can’t sell the feeling, they will, at the very least, try to sell you the T‑shirt. ♦


newyorker--2020-10-12--New York City’s Biggest Trump Fan Wants to Paint You an American Flag

New Dorp Lane , on Staten Island , is nothing like a lane .
Half of the borough , it seems , promenade along the thoroughfare by car or on foot , and of those passersby half ( it seems ) stopped by a storefront gallery one day recently to greet Staten Island ’ s most famous artist , Scott LoBaido .
The gallery occupies a space similar to the ones rented by small businesses—Italian , Chinese , and Mexican restaurants , a cell-phone-repair store , insurance brokers , bakeries , hair salons—up and down the street .
Sometimes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the sidewalk .
From a distance , a vertical view would include the table , covered with a white cloth ; a Martini in a Martini glass ( yellow dab of lemon peel ) ; a pack of Marlboros ; a brushed-chrome Zippo lighter ; the seated artist , deliberately unshaved , dressed in a white T-shirt and a gray knit hoodie ( unzipped ; purchased at a Salvation Army store ) ; the awning of the gallery , which says “ American Artist , Scott LoBaido ” ; and , atop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an unrelated billboard for a personal-injury law firm , with the words “ Bite Back ” in big letters and a picture of a snarling dog in a spiked collar .
LoBaido is perhaps the most visible supporter of Donald Trump in New York City , maybe on the entire East Coast .
On the day that the President checked into the hospital with Covid-19 , the artist sat at his table with an acquaintance who last saw him ( and who wrote about him in these pages ) in the aftermath of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Syracuse University sweatshirt gave LoBaido a thumbs-up and said , “ This Covid business is only gon na help us.
” The artist returned the thumbs-up and replied , “ Trump will use it to his advantage , you watch .
He ’ ll quarantine , take a few days , kick back , get a lot of work done , and come out swinging , like a bull in a fuckin ’ rodeo !
” “ I don ’ t want to interrupt , I just wanted to tell you that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a short dark-haired woman said , squeezing LoBaido ’ s shoulder and continuing on .
He paints somewhat surrealist works on the themes of patriotism , religion , racial harmony , Nascar racing , and the American flag .
He has driven all over the country in a Chevy Suburban painting American flags on buildings for free .
In some of the most far-flung small places , you might come upon a LoBaido flag on the side of a grain elevator or a brick building on Main Street .
He says that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in every one of the fifty states .
The acquaintance asked whether he paints Confederate flags .
“ No , ” LoBaido answered immediately .
He raised his Martini glass to salute a driver who was saluting him with a Dunkin ’ Donuts cup through the open window of a pickup truck .
“ I can ’ t say I would never paint any particular thing , ” he went on .
“ But a Confederate flag ?
No .
I know some people say it ’ s not racist , it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve never painted a Confederate flag .
It ’ s nothing like the American flag .
The American flag is the greatest work in the history of art , because it ’ s about everybody—Blacks , whites , every immigrant , every person who dreams about this country .
It ’ s about me , it ’ s about you even though I know you don ’ t agree with me politically , and , most of all , it ’ s about freedom , the greatest discovery in the history of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person to paint the flag as a work of art.
” What about Jasper Johns ?
“ Yes , of course Jasper Johns did that before me , and his flags are beautiful , don ’ t get me wrong , ” LoBaido said .
“ But how many did he do ?
Maybe a few dozen , tops , not including prints ?
I have painted literally thousands of American flags.
” Praise kept arriving from passersby : for the photographs of his work that had been published that morning in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a boxer exulting over a flattened opponent labelled “ Antifa ” ; for the blue line he painted down the middle of nearby Hylan Boulevard , in support of the police ; and for the banner he recently hung from a bridge on the Staten Island Expressway showing Mayor Bill de Blasio holding the severed head of the Statue of Liberty by a spike of her crown .
“ Loved the de Blasio thing , Scott !
” a man who pulled up in an S.U.V .
covered with Trump signs said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do a better job .
.
.
of running this city .
.
.
than that fucking guy !
” LoBaido said , gesturing with his right hand like a Toscanini conducting his own conversation .
Then he revealed that he plans to run for mayor in 2021 .
“ No formal announcement yet , ” LoBaido said .
“ But I ’ m definitely gon na do it.
” His assistant , Annmarie , brought him a postcard , just received , with most of the words on it capitalized , saying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and is with him all the way .
♦

New Dorp Lane, on Staten Island, is nothing like a lane. Half of the borough, it seems, promenade along the thoroughfare by car or on foot, and of those passersby half (it seems) stopped by a storefront gallery one day recently to greet Staten Island’s most famous artist, Scott LoBaido. The gallery occupies a space similar to the ones rented by small businesses—Italian, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants, a cell-phone-repair store, insurance brokers, bakeries, hair salons—up and down the street. Sometimes the artist takes a break at a table on the sidewalk. From a distance, a vertical view would include the table, covered with a white cloth; a Martini in a Martini glass (yellow dab of lemon peel); a pack of Marlboros; a brushed-chrome Zippo lighter; the seated artist, deliberately unshaved, dressed in a white T-shirt and a gray knit hoodie (unzipped; purchased at a Salvation Army store); the awning of the gallery, which says “American Artist, Scott LoBaido”; and, atop all that, on the roof, an unrelated billboard for a personal-injury law firm, with the words “Bite Back” in big letters and a picture of a snarling dog in a spiked collar.
LoBaido is perhaps the most visible supporter of Donald Trump in New York City, maybe on the entire East Coast. On the day that the President checked into the hospital with Covid-19, the artist sat at his table with an acquaintance who last saw him (and who wrote about him in these pages) in the aftermath of the 2016 election. A pedestrian wearing a Syracuse University sweatshirt gave LoBaido a thumbs-up and said, “This Covid business is only gonna help us.” The artist returned the thumbs-up and replied, “Trump will use it to his advantage, you watch. He’ll quarantine, take a few days, kick back, get a lot of work done, and come out swinging, like a bull in a fuckin’ rodeo!”
“I don’t want to interrupt, I just wanted to tell you that I love what you do,” a short dark-haired woman said, squeezing LoBaido’s shoulder and continuing on. He paints somewhat surrealist works on the themes of patriotism, religion, racial harmony, Nascar racing, and the American flag. He has driven all over the country in a Chevy Suburban painting American flags on buildings for free. In some of the most far-flung small places, you might come upon a LoBaido flag on the side of a grain elevator or a brick building on Main Street. He says that he has painted at least three flag murals in every one of the fifty states.
The acquaintance asked whether he paints Confederate flags. “No,” LoBaido answered immediately. He raised his Martini glass to salute a driver who was saluting him with a Dunkin’ Donuts cup through the open window of a pickup truck. “I can’t say I would never paint any particular thing,” he went on. “But a Confederate flag? No. I know some people say it’s not racist, it’s about Southern heritage. But I’ve never painted a Confederate flag. It’s nothing like the American flag. The American flag is the greatest work in the history of art, because it’s about everybody—Blacks, whites, every immigrant, every person who dreams about this country. It’s about me, it’s about you even though I know you don’t agree with me politically, and, most of all, it’s about freedom, the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. I’m the first person to paint the flag as a work of art.”
“Ignore it. He barks at everything.” Cartoon by Edward Frascino Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
What about Jasper Johns? “Yes, of course Jasper Johns did that before me, and his flags are beautiful, don’t get me wrong,” LoBaido said. “But how many did he do? Maybe a few dozen, tops, not including prints? I have painted literally thousands of American flags.”
Praise kept arriving from passersby: for the photographs of his work that had been published that morning in the Post; for his painting depicting Trump as a boxer exulting over a flattened opponent labelled “Antifa”; for the blue line he painted down the middle of nearby Hylan Boulevard, in support of the police; and for the banner he recently hung from a bridge on the Staten Island Expressway showing Mayor Bill de Blasio holding the severed head of the Statue of Liberty by a spike of her crown. “Loved the de Blasio thing, Scott!” a man who pulled up in an S.U.V. covered with Trump signs said.
“I . . . could do a better job . . . of running this city . . . than that fucking guy!” LoBaido said, gesturing with his right hand like a Toscanini conducting his own conversation. Then he revealed that he plans to run for mayor in 2021. “No formal announcement yet,” LoBaido said. “But I’m definitely gonna do it.” His assistant, Annmarie, brought him a postcard, just received, with most of the words on it capitalized, saying that the sender admires everything LoBaido does and is with him all the way. ♦


newyorker--2020-10-12--Kadir Nelson’s “The Centennial”

Kadir Nelson’s “The Centennial”

In 1920 , baseball , like nearly all of American public life , was segregated .
That year , in the Midwest , the owners of a small group of Black baseball teams convened to create the Negro National League .
It was the first real and successful effort to showcase the talent that was banned from the majors , and in the following years more Black leagues would spring up across the country , fading only after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball ’ s color barrier , in 1947 .
In his latest cover , Kadir Nelson pays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently spoke with us about portraiture , sports , and more .
This image celebrates the hundredth anniversary of the Negro leagues .
What does the occasion mean to you ?
Baseball is a staple pastime in America .
Like many other facets of American history , it ’ s helped define our national character and national story—for both better and worse .
It still amazes me that this talented , ambitious group , which consisted primarily of African-American players and businesspeople , was able to create such successful enterprises , given all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s astounding .
Your image of a player in 1920 feels timeless .
How do you successfully evoke another era through only a few details ?
At its core , baseball is a relatively simple game , so I created a simple composition , with a few visual cues—the wooden bat , vintage uniform , and period wall advertisements—to set this player in the appropriate era .
He ’ s also in a classic batter ’ s pose .
I ’ ve created many baseball-related paintings over my career , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ visual language and style for the subject .
Were you a baseball fan as a kid ?
Who were some of your sports heroes growing up ?
Although I played Little League as a youngster , I wasn ’ t a big baseball fan then .
I only became a fan after seeing Ken Burns ’ s PBS documentary series “ Baseball , ” which aired in the mid-nineties .
And my all-time sports hero ?
Michael Jordan , hands down .
The figure in your painting , silhouetted against the sky , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and pride .
Did you pose for it ?
What importance do you think stance has in a portrait ?
I ’ ve posed for just about all of my baseball paintings , including this one .
As you mentioned , I was trying to create an image that projected strength , pride , and athletic prowess—all qualities embodied by the players in the Negro leagues .
It ’ s a long list , but among my favorites are Thomas Eakins , John Singer Sargent , Henry Ossawa Tanner , Velázquez , Charles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more covers about baseball , see below :

In 1920, baseball, like nearly all of American public life, was segregated. That year, in the Midwest, the owners of a small group of Black baseball teams convened to create the Negro National League. It was the first real and successful effort to showcase the talent that was banned from the majors, and in the following years more Black leagues would spring up across the country, fading only after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, in 1947. In his latest cover, Kadir Nelson pays tribute to this history. The artist recently spoke with us about portraiture, sports, and more.
This image celebrates the hundredth anniversary of the Negro leagues. What does the occasion mean to you?
Baseball is a staple pastime in America. Like many other facets of American history, it’s helped define our national character and national story—for both better and worse. It still amazes me that this talented, ambitious group, which consisted primarily of African-American players and businesspeople, was able to create such successful enterprises, given all of the systemic challenges that they faced. It’s astounding.
Your image of a player in 1920 feels timeless. How do you successfully evoke another era through only a few details?
At its core, baseball is a relatively simple game, so I created a simple composition, with a few visual cues—the wooden bat, vintage uniform, and period wall advertisements—to set this player in the appropriate era. He’s also in a classic batter’s pose. I’ve created many baseball-related paintings over my career, so I’ve developed a unique visual language and style for the subject.
Were you a baseball fan as a kid? Who were some of your sports heroes growing up?
Although I played Little League as a youngster, I wasn’t a big baseball fan then. I only became a fan after seeing Ken Burns’s PBS documentary series “Baseball,” which aired in the mid-nineties. And my all-time sports hero? Michael Jordan, hands down.
The figure in your painting, silhouetted against the sky, looks at the viewer and radiates strength and pride. Did you pose for it? What importance do you think stance has in a portrait?
I’ve posed for just about all of my baseball paintings, including this one. As you mentioned, I was trying to create an image that projected strength, pride, and athletic prowess—all qualities embodied by the players in the Negro leagues.
Which portrait painters inspire you?
It’s a long list, but among my favorites are Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Velázquez, Charles White, and Norman Rockwell.
For more covers about baseball, see below:


newyorker--2020-10-12--The Heartsick Hilarity of John Berryman’s Letters

The poet John Berryman was born in 1914 , in McAlester , Oklahoma .
He was educated at Columbia and then in England , where he studied at Cambridge , met W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas , and lit a cigarette for W. B. Yeats .
All three men left traces in Berryman ’ s early work .
In 1938 , he returned to New York and embarked upon a spate of teaching posts in colleges across the land , beginning at Wayne State University and progressing to stints at Harvard , Princeton , Cincinnati , Berkeley , Brown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could feel unsettled .
The history of his health , physical and mental , was no less fitful and spasmodic , and alcohol , which has a soft spot for poets , found him an easy mark .
In a similar vein , his romantic life was lunging , irrepressible , and desperate , so much so that it squandered any lasting claim to romance .
Thrice married , he fathered a son and two daughters .
He died in 1972 , by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis .
To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fall was witnessed by somebody named Art Hitman .
Berryman would have laughed at that .
In an existence that was littered with loss , the one thing that never failed him , apart from his unwaning and wax-free ear for English verse , was his sense of humor .
The first that I heard of Berryman was this : Life , friends , is boring .
We must not say so .
After all , the sky flashes , the great sea yearns , we ourselves flash and yearn , and moreover @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( repeatingly ) ‘ Ever to confess you ’ re bored means you have no Inner Resources.
’ I conclude now I have no inner resources , because I am heavy bored .
Peoples bore me , literature bores me , especially great literature , Henry bores me , with his plights & gripes as bad as achilles , who loves people and valiant art , which bores me .
And the tranquil hills , & gin , look like a drag and somehow a dog has taken itself & its tail considerably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , leaving behind : me , wag .
“ Wag ” meaning a witty fellow , or “ wag ” meaning that he is of no more use than the back end of a mutt ?
Who on earth is Henry ?
Also , whoever ’ s talking , why does he address us as “ friends , ” as if he were Mark Antony and we were a Roman mob , and why can ’ t he even honor Achilles—the hero of the Iliad , a foundation stone of “ great literature @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to know such literature pretty well before you earn the right to claim that it tires you out .
Few knew it better than Berryman , or shouldered the burdens of serious reading with a more remorseless joy .
As he once said , “ When it came to a choice between buying a book and a sandwich , as it often did , I always chose the book.
” “ Life , friends ” is the fourteenth of “ The Dream Songs , ” the many-splendored enterprise that consumed Berryman ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his career , and on which his reputation largely rests .
His labors on the Songs began in 1955 and led to “ 77 Dream Songs , ” which was published in 1964 and won him a Pulitzer Prize .
In the course of the Songs , which he regarded as one long poem , he is represented , or unreliably impersonated , by a figure named Henry , who undergoes “ the whole humiliating Human round ” on his behalf .
As Berryman explained , “ Henry both is and is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certain points.
” In 1968 , along came a further three hundred and eight Songs , under the title “ His Toy , His Dream , His Rest.
” ( A haunting phrase , which grabs the seven ages of man , as outlined in “ As You Like It , ” and squeezes them down to three . )
Two days after publication , he was asked , by the Harvard Advocate , about his profession .
“ Being a poet is a funny kind of jazz .
It doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It ’ s just something you do.
” There was plenty of all that jazz .
Berryman forsook the distillations of Eliot for the profusion of Whitman ; the Dream Songs , endlessly rocking and rolling , surge onward in waves .
Lay them aside , and you still have the other volumes of Berryman ’ s poems , including “ The Dispossessed ” ( 1948 ) , “ Homage to Mistress Bradstreet ” ( 1956 ) , and “ Love & Fame ” ( 1970 ) .
Bundled together , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If magnitude freaks you out , there are slimmer selections—one from the Library of America , edited by Kevin Young , the poetry editor of this magazine , and another , “ The Heart Is Strange , ” compiled by Daniel Swift to toast the centenary , in 2014 , of the poet ’ s birth .
And don ’ t forget the authoritative 1982 biography by John Haffenden , who also put together a posthumous collection , “ Henry ’ s Fate and Other Poems , ” in 1977 , as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( 1999 ) , a Falstaffian banquet of his scholarly work on the Bard .
Some of Berryman ’ s critical writings are clustered , invaluably , in “ The Freedom of the Poet ” ( 1976 ) .
In short , you need space on your shelves , plus a clear head , if you want to join the Berrymaniacs .
Proceed with caution ; we can be a cranky bunch .
“ The Dream Songs ” is a hubbub , and some of it is spoken in blackface—or , to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as blackvoice .
It deals in unembarrassed minstrelsy , complete with a caricature of verbal tics , all too pointedly transcribed : “ Now there you exaggerate , Sah .
We hafta die.
” To say that Berryman was airing the prejudices of his era is hardly to exonerate him ; in any case , he seems to be evoking , in purposeful anachronism , an all but vanished age of vaudeville .
Kevin Young , who is Black , prefaces his choice of Berryman ’ s poetry by arguing , “ Much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comes from its use of race and blackface to express a ( white ) self unraveling.
” Some readers will share Young ’ s generously inquiring attitude ; others will veer away from Berryman and never go back .
For anyone willing to stick around , there ’ s a new book on the block .
“ The Selected Letters of John Berryman ” weighs in at more than seven hundred pages .
It is edited by Philip Coleman and Calista McRae , and published by the Belknap Press , at Harvard—a selfless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as “ a haven for the boring and the foolish , ” wherein “ my students display a form of illiterate urbanity which will soon become very depressing.
” ( Not that other colleges elude his gibes .
Berkeley is summed up as “ Paradise , with anthrax.
” ) The earliest letter , dated September , 1925 , is from the schoolboy Berryman to his parents , and ends , “ I love you too much to talk about.
” In a pleasing symmetry , the final letter printed here , from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own parenthood .
He tells a friend , “ We had a baby , Sarah Rebecca , in June—a beauty.
” And what lies in between ?
More or less the polyphony that you ’ d expect , should you come pre-tuned into Berryman .
“ Vigour & fatigue , confidence & despair , the elegant & the blunt , the bright & the dry.
” Such is the medley , he says , that he finds in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins , and you can feel Berryman swooping with similar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Books I ’ ve got , copulation I need , ” he writes from Cambridge , at the age of twenty-two , thus initiating a lifelong and dangerous refrain .
When he reports , two years later , that “ I was attacked by an excited loneliness which is still with me and which has so far produced fifteen poems , ” is that a grouse or a boast ?
There are alarming valedictions : “ Nurse w. another shot .
no more now , ” or , “ Maybe I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; maybe I better not.
” There are letters to Ezra Pound , one of which , sent with “ atlantean respect & affection , ” announces , “ What we want is a new form of the daring , ” a very Poundian demand .
And there are smart little swerves into the aphoristic— “ Writers should be heard and not seen ” ; “ All modern writers are complicated before they are good ” —or into courteous eighteenth-century brusquerie .
Pastiche can be useful when you have a grudge to convey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are plainly either a fool or a scoundrel .
It is kinder to think you a fool ; and so I do.
” It ’ s a letter best taken with a pinch of snuff .
Berryman was a captious and self-heating complainer , slow to cool .
Just as the first word of the Iliad means “ Wrath , ” so the first word of the opening Dream Song is “ Huffy.
” Seldom can you predict the cause of his looming ire .
A concert performance by the Stradivarius Quartet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him away : “ Beethoven ’ s op .
130 they took now to be a circus , now to be a sea-chantey , & I fled in the middle to escape their Cavatina.
” The following year , an epic letter to his landlord , on Grove Street , in Boston , is almost entirely concerned with a refrigerator , which has “ developed a high-pitched scream.
” Berryman was not an easy man to live with , or to love , and the likelihood that even household appliances found his company @ @ @ @ @ @

The poet John Berryman was born in 1914, in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was educated at Columbia and then in England, where he studied at Cambridge, met W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas, and lit a cigarette for W. B. Yeats. All three men left traces in Berryman’s early work. In 1938, he returned to New York and embarked upon a spate of teaching posts in colleges across the land, beginning at Wayne State University and progressing to stints at Harvard, Princeton, Cincinnati, Berkeley, Brown, and other arenas in which he could feel unsettled. The history of his health, physical and mental, was no less fitful and spasmodic, and alcohol, which has a soft spot for poets, found him an easy mark. In a similar vein, his romantic life was lunging, irrepressible, and desperate, so much so that it squandered any lasting claim to romance. Thrice married, he fathered a son and two daughters. He died in 1972, by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis. To the appalled gratification of posterity, his fall was witnessed by somebody named Art Hitman.
Berryman would have laughed at that. In an existence that was littered with loss, the one thing that never failed him, apart from his unwaning and wax-free ear for English verse, was his sense of humor. The first that I heard of Berryman was this:
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles, who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.
“Wag” meaning a witty fellow, or “wag” meaning that he is of no more use than the back end of a mutt? Who on earth is Henry? Also, whoever’s talking, why does he address us as “friends,” as if he were Mark Antony and we were a Roman mob, and why can’t he even honor Achilles—the hero of the Iliad, a foundation stone of “great literature”—with a capital letter? You have to know such literature pretty well before you earn the right to claim that it tires you out. Few knew it better than Berryman, or shouldered the burdens of serious reading with a more remorseless joy. As he once said, “When it came to a choice between buying a book and a sandwich, as it often did, I always chose the book.”
“Life, friends” is the fourteenth of “The Dream Songs,” the many-splendored enterprise that consumed Berryman’s energies in the latter half of his career, and on which his reputation largely rests. His labors on the Songs began in 1955 and led to “77 Dream Songs,” which was published in 1964 and won him a Pulitzer Prize. In the course of the Songs, which he regarded as one long poem, he is represented, or unreliably impersonated, by a figure named Henry, who undergoes “the whole humiliating Human round” on his behalf. As Berryman explained, “Henry both is and is not me, obviously. We touch at certain points.” In 1968, along came a further three hundred and eight Songs, under the title “His Toy, His Dream, His Rest.” (A haunting phrase, which grabs the seven ages of man, as outlined in “As You Like It,” and squeezes them down to three.) Two days after publication, he was asked, by the Harvard Advocate, about his profession. “Being a poet is a funny kind of jazz. It doesn’t get you anything,” he said. “It’s just something you do.”
There was plenty of all that jazz. Berryman forsook the distillations of Eliot for the profusion of Whitman; the Dream Songs, endlessly rocking and rolling, surge onward in waves. Lay them aside, and you still have the other volumes of Berryman’s poems, including “The Dispossessed” (1948), “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet” (1956), and “Love & Fame” (1970). Bundled together, they fill nearly three hundred pages. If magnitude freaks you out, there are slimmer selections—one from the Library of America, edited by Kevin Young, the poetry editor of this magazine, and another, “The Heart Is Strange,” compiled by Daniel Swift to toast the centenary, in 2014, of the poet’s birth. And don’t forget the authoritative 1982 biography by John Haffenden, who also put together a posthumous collection, “Henry’s Fate and Other Poems,” in 1977, as well as “Berryman’s Shakespeare” (1999), a Falstaffian banquet of his scholarly work on the Bard. Some of Berryman’s critical writings are clustered, invaluably, in “The Freedom of the Poet” (1976). In short, you need space on your shelves, plus a clear head, if you want to join the Berrymaniacs. Proceed with caution; we can be a cranky bunch.
Of late, Berryman’s star has waned. Its glow was never steady in the first place, but it has dimmed appreciably, because of lines like these:
Arrive a time when all coons lose dere grip,
but is he come? Le’s do a hoedown, gal.
“The Dream Songs” is a hubbub, and some of it is spoken in blackface—or, to be accurate, in what might be described as blackvoice. It deals in unembarrassed minstrelsy, complete with a caricature of verbal tics, all too pointedly transcribed: “Now there you exaggerate, Sah. We hafta die.” To say that Berryman was airing the prejudices of his era is hardly to exonerate him; in any case, he seems to be evoking, in purposeful anachronism, an all but vanished age of vaudeville. Kevin Young, who is Black, prefaces his choice of Berryman’s poetry by arguing, “Much of the force of The Dream Songs comes from its use of race and blackface to express a (white) self unraveling.” Some readers will share Young’s generously inquiring attitude; others will veer away from Berryman and never go back.
For anyone willing to stick around, there’s a new book on the block. “The Selected Letters of John Berryman” weighs in at more than seven hundred pages. It is edited by Philip Coleman and Calista McRae, and published by the Belknap Press, at Harvard—a selfless undertaking, given that Berryman derides Harvard as “a haven for the boring and the foolish,” wherein “my students display a form of illiterate urbanity which will soon become very depressing.” (Not that other colleges elude his gibes. Berkeley is summed up as “Paradise, with anthrax.”) The earliest letter, dated September, 1925, is from the schoolboy Berryman to his parents, and ends, “I love you too much to talk about.” In a pleasing symmetry, the final letter printed here, from 1971, shows Berryman rejoicing in his own parenthood. He tells a friend, “We had a baby, Sarah Rebecca, in June—a beauty.”
And what lies in between? More or less the polyphony that you’d expect, should you come pre-tuned into Berryman. “Vigour & fatigue, confidence & despair, the elegant & the blunt, the bright & the dry.” Such is the medley, he says, that he finds in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and you can feel Berryman swooping with similar freedom from one tone to the next. “Books I’ve got, copulation I need,” he writes from Cambridge, at the age of twenty-two, thus initiating a lifelong and dangerous refrain. When he reports, two years later, that “I was attacked by an excited loneliness which is still with me and which has so far produced fifteen poems,” is that a grouse or a boast? There are alarming valedictions: “Nurse w. another shot. no more now,” or, “Maybe I better go get a bottle of whisky; maybe I better not.” There are letters to Ezra Pound, one of which, sent with “atlantean respect & affection,” announces, “What we want is a new form of the daring,” a very Poundian demand. And there are smart little swerves into the aphoristic—“Writers should be heard and not seen”; “All modern writers are complicated before they are good”—or into courteous eighteenth-century brusquerie. Pastiche can be useful when you have a grudge to convey: “My dear Sir: You are plainly either a fool or a scoundrel. It is kinder to think you a fool; and so I do.” It’s a letter best taken with a pinch of snuff.


newyorker--2020-10-12--“Song,” by Louise Glück

“Song,” by Louise Glück

Leo Cruz makes the most beautiful white bowls ; I think I must get some to you but how is @ @ @ @ @ He is teaching me the names of the desert grasses ; I have a book @ @ @ @ @ is impossible Leo thinks the things man makes are more beautiful than what exists in @ @ @ @ @ .
And Leo says wait and see .
We make plans to walk the trails @ @ @ @ @ ask him , when ?
Never again : that is what we do not say @ @ @ @ @ to live in imagination : a cold wind blows as I cross the desert ; @ @ @ @ @ in the distance ; smoke is coming from the chimney That is the kiln , @ @ @ @ @ makes porcelain in the desert Ah , he says , you are dreaming again And @ @ @ @ @ m glad I dream the fire is still alive

Leo Cruz makes the most beautiful white bowls;
I think I must get some to you
but how is the question
in these times
He is teaching me
the names of the desert grasses;
I have a book
since to see the grasses is impossible
Leo thinks the things man makes
are more beautiful
than what exists in nature
and I say no.
And Leo says
wait and see.
We make plans
to walk the trails together.
When, I ask him,
when? Never again:
that is what we do not say.
He is teaching me
to live in imagination:
a cold wind
blows as I cross the desert;
I can see his house in the distance;
smoke is coming from the chimney
That is the kiln, I think;
only Leo makes porcelain in the desert
Ah, he says, you are dreaming again
And I say then I’m glad I dream
the fire is still alive


newyorker--2020-10-12--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

The Spymasters , by Chris Whipple ( Scribner ) .
This follow-up to “ The Gatekeepers , ” the author ’ s study of White House chiefs of staff , examines how C.I.A .
directors have shaped the course of the past fifty years , from Richard Helms ’ s refusal to help Nixon cover up Watergate to John Brennan ’ s discovery of a Russian threat to the 2016 election .
Whipple candidly assesses how the men ( and one woman ) in the job have negotiated its daunting challenges , including the ethical dilemmas surrounding assassinations , coups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Presidents who want them to break the law .
Underlying Whipple ’ s analysis is a provocative question : “ Is the world ’ s most powerful intelligence agency a force for good or evil in the world ?
” Having and Being Had , by Eula Biss ( Riverhead ) .
The trade-off of time and money is at the heart of this memoir , which begins with the author and her husband buying a house .
For Biss , a poet and essayist raised by bohemians , ownership is unfamiliar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the property arouses—awareness of the debt the purchase required , a lust for expensive paint—bear a newcomer ’ s illuminating estrangement .
Money , for her , had previously been only a means of accruing time to pursue activities , like writing , on which capitalism places a low value .
“ It seemed like a waste to spend time on property , ” she writes , as she critiques the systems that have made her think in these terms .
The Perfect Nine , by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong ’ o , translated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New Press ) .
In this sinuous retelling by the great Kenyan writer , the founding myth of the Gĩkũyũ people emerges as an epic poem rivalling the Iliad in body count and surpassing it in whimsy .
The title refers to the daughters of Gĩkũyũ ( Man ) and Mũmbi ( Woman ) ; a tenth daughter , Warigia , “ is often missing when the nine are mentioned ” because of her “ crippled legs ” and rumored “ occult powers.
” When ninety-nine men arrive seeking the daughters ’ hands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a harrowing journey to mythic realms .
Tellingly , given Ngũgĩ ’ s preoccupation with “ Decolonising the Mind ” ( the title of his influential essay collection ) , the narrative envisions migration and the mixing of peoples not as a drive for domination but as a “ quest for the beautiful.
” Missionaries , by Phil Klay ( Penguin Press ) .
Klay , who won the National Book Award for his short stories about American veterans of the Iraq War , visits similar territory in his début novel .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , an American journalist , recognizes parallels with what she ’ s witnessed in the Middle East : the U.S. is “ always projecting military power across the globe and just shifting the rationale of why.
” Klay ’ s plot , depicting modern warfare through a disparate cast of characters , sometimes strains under the weight of all he wants to teach us .
But his writing is wrenching and insightful .
“ People don ’ t read newspapers now , ” Lisette says .
“ People don ’ t accidentally get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opinion page anymore.
” Her question , and Klay ’ s , is “ How do you reach people ?
”

The Spymasters, by Chris Whipple (Scribner). This follow-up to “The Gatekeepers,” the author’s study of White House chiefs of staff, examines how C.I.A. directors have shaped the course of the past fifty years, from Richard Helms’s refusal to help Nixon cover up Watergate to John Brennan’s discovery of a Russian threat to the 2016 election. Whipple candidly assesses how the men (and one woman) in the job have negotiated its daunting challenges, including the ethical dilemmas surrounding assassinations, coups, enhanced interrogation, drone warfare, and Presidents who want them to break the law. Underlying Whipple’s analysis is a provocative question: “Is the world’s most powerful intelligence agency a force for good or evil in the world?”
Having and Being Had, by Eula Biss (Riverhead). The trade-off of time and money is at the heart of this memoir, which begins with the author and her husband buying a house. For Biss, a poet and essayist raised by bohemians, ownership is unfamiliar, and her descriptions of the feelings the property arouses—awareness of the debt the purchase required, a lust for expensive paint—bear a newcomer’s illuminating estrangement. Money, for her, had previously been only a means of accruing time to pursue activities, like writing, on which capitalism places a low value. “It seemed like a waste to spend time on property,” she writes, as she critiques the systems that have made her think in these terms.
The Perfect Nine, by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, translated from the Gĩkũyũ by the author (New Press). In this sinuous retelling by the great Kenyan writer, the founding myth of the Gĩkũyũ people emerges as an epic poem rivalling the Iliad in body count and surpassing it in whimsy. The title refers to the daughters of Gĩkũyũ (Man) and Mũmbi (Woman); a tenth daughter, Warigia, “is often missing when the nine are mentioned” because of her “crippled legs” and rumored “occult powers.” When ninety-nine men arrive seeking the daughters’ hands in marriage, they must first undertake a harrowing journey to mythic realms. Tellingly, given Ngũgĩ’s preoccupation with “Decolonising the Mind” (the title of his influential essay collection), the narrative envisions migration and the mixing of peoples not as a drive for domination but as a “quest for the beautiful.”
Missionaries, by Phil Klay (Penguin Press). Klay, who won the National Book Award for his short stories about American veterans of the Iraq War, visits similar territory in his début novel. The action unfolds in Colombia, where Lisette, an American journalist, recognizes parallels with what she’s witnessed in the Middle East: the U.S. is “always projecting military power across the globe and just shifting the rationale of why.” Klay’s plot, depicting modern warfare through a disparate cast of characters, sometimes strains under the weight of all he wants to teach us. But his writing is wrenching and insightful. “People don’t read newspapers now,” Lisette says. “People don’t accidentally get reported facts on the way to the opinion page anymore.” Her question, and Klay’s, is “How do you reach people?”


The Mail

In John Lahr ’ s Profile of Ethan Hawke , who plays the abolitionist John Brown in “ The Good Lord Bird , ” a new Showtime series , Lahr says that Hawke will be “ the first person to put John Brown ’ s full story on film ” ( “ The Shape-Shifter , ” September 21st ) .
I am a descendant of John Brown , and appreciate the work both of Hawke and of James McBride , who wrote the novel on which the show is based .
I welcome their effort to bring John Brown ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But “ The Good Lord Bird ” is not a bio-pic ; it does not remotely tell the full story of John Brown .
Since the film “ Santa Fe Trail , ” released in 1940 , which portrayed Brown , played by Raymond Massey , as a maniacal murderer , historians and biographers have done much to debunk characterizations of Brown as insane , many of which were rooted in Jim Crow propaganda and in twentieth-century white supremacy .
But the John Brown conceived by James McBride is a fictional character—a distortion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the man .
And , while Hawke ’ s project to portray Brown fully is admirable , it bears repeating that any perpetuation of the pervasive tropes about the abolitionist should not be taken lightly , especially in the context of this year ’ s nationwide protests for racial justice .
Nicola Twilley describes scientific and corporate efforts to reformulate and synthesize a sugar that can satisfy the human craving for sweetness while lessening the cost to public health ( “ How Sweet It Is , ” September 28th ) .
As Twilley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ healthy sugar is the gastronomic equivalent of Shangri-La .
Conversations about sugar consumption and public health , including those about new sugars , must consider the incentives that drive food and beverage companies .
Large manufacturers lobby against public-health interventions that threaten their bottom line ; run marketing campaigns for unhealthy foods which disproportionately target communities of color ; and pay researchers to flood scientific journals and conferences with business-friendly data .
Many companies are racing to redesign sugar not out of an interest in the health of consumers but in pursuit of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s poignant story “ Face Time , ” the narrator ’ s elderly father , who has contracted the coronavirus and is being treated with hydroxychloroquine , seemingly objects to hearing the song “ Danny Boy , ” because he believes that the Irish “ stole ” it from the English ( Fiction , September 28th ) .
In fact , the song has its origins in both places : the melody is from Ireland , and was popular both in Derry , in Northern Ireland , and on the Beara Peninsula @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Maidean i mBéarra ” ( “ A Morning in Beara ” ) .
The lyrics , on the other hand , were written by Frederic Weatherly , an English lawyer , in 1910 .
Although the narrator ’ s father may have harbored this mild conspiracy theory about the Irish before falling ill , Moore ’ s deft association of it with hydroxychloroquine , which can cause hallucinations , marks this story as subtly emblematic of our times .
Letters should be sent with the writer ’ s name , address , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ newyorker.com .
Letters may be edited for length and clarity , and may be published in any medium .
We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we can not reply to every letter .

Playing John Brown
In John Lahr’s Profile of Ethan Hawke, who plays the abolitionist John Brown in “The Good Lord Bird,” a new Showtime series, Lahr says that Hawke will be “the first person to put John Brown’s full story on film” (“The Shape-Shifter,” September 21st). I am a descendant of John Brown, and appreciate the work both of Hawke and of James McBride, who wrote the novel on which the show is based. I welcome their effort to bring John Brown’s story to a wider audience. But “The Good Lord Bird” is not a bio-pic; it does not remotely tell the full story of John Brown. Since the film “Santa Fe Trail,” released in 1940, which portrayed Brown, played by Raymond Massey, as a maniacal murderer, historians and biographers have done much to debunk characterizations of Brown as insane, many of which were rooted in Jim Crow propaganda and in twentieth-century white supremacy. But the John Brown conceived by James McBride is a fictional character—a distortion, if a friendlier one, of the man. And, while Hawke’s project to portray Brown fully is admirable, it bears repeating that any perpetuation of the pervasive tropes about the abolitionist should not be taken lightly, especially in the context of this year’s nationwide protests for racial justice.
Marty Brown
Portland, Ore.
Sweeten the Deal
Nicola Twilley describes scientific and corporate efforts to reformulate and synthesize a sugar that can satisfy the human craving for sweetness while lessening the cost to public health (“How Sweet It Is,” September 28th). As Twilley admits, a perfectly tasty, perfectly healthy sugar is the gastronomic equivalent of Shangri-La. Conversations about sugar consumption and public health, including those about new sugars, must consider the incentives that drive food and beverage companies. Large manufacturers lobby against public-health interventions that threaten their bottom line; run marketing campaigns for unhealthy foods which disproportionately target communities of color; and pay researchers to flood scientific journals and conferences with business-friendly data. Many companies are racing to redesign sugar not out of an interest in the health of consumers but in pursuit of a healthier business.
Daniel Zaltz
Ph.D. student, Public Health
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
From Glen to Glen
In Lorrie Moore’s poignant story “Face Time,” the narrator’s elderly father, who has contracted the coronavirus and is being treated with hydroxychloroquine, seemingly objects to hearing the song “Danny Boy,” because he believes that the Irish “stole” it from the English (Fiction, September 28th). In fact, the song has its origins in both places: the melody is from Ireland, and was popular both in Derry, in Northern Ireland, and on the Beara Peninsula, where it was known as “Maidean i mBéarra” (“A Morning in Beara”). The lyrics, on the other hand, were written by Frederic Weatherly, an English lawyer, in 1910. Although the narrator’s father may have harbored this mild conspiracy theory about the Irish before falling ill, Moore’s deft association of it with hydroxychloroquine, which can cause hallucinations, marks this story as subtly emblematic of our times.
Ben Howard
Emeritus Professor of English
Alfred University
Alfred, N.Y.
•
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.