newyorker--2020-02-03--Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

In 1930 , the English economist John Maynard Keynes took a break from writing about the problems of the interwar economy and indulged in a bit of futurology .
In an essay entitled “ Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren , ” he speculated that by the year 2030 capital investment and technological progress would have raised living standards as much as eightfold , creating a society so rich that people would work as little as fifteen hours a week , devoting the rest of their time to leisure and other “ non-economic purposes.
” As striving for greater affluence faded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of money as a possession .
.
.
will be recognized for what it is , a somewhat disgusting morbidity.
” This transformation hasn ’ t taken place yet , and most economic policymakers remain committed to maximizing the rate of economic growth .
But Keynes ’ s predictions weren ’ t entirely off base .
After a century in which G.D.P .
per person has gone up more than sixfold in the United States , a vigorous debate has arisen about the feasibility and wisdom of creating and consuming ever more stuff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left , increasing alarm about climate change and other environmental threats has given birth to the “ degrowth ” movement , which calls on advanced countries to embrace zero or even negative G.D.P .
growth .
“ The faster we produce and consume goods , the more we damage the environment , ” Giorgos Kallis , an ecological economist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona , writes in his manifesto , “ Degrowth.
” “ There is no way to both have your cake and eat it , here .
If humanity is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life support systems , the global economy should slow down.
” In “ Growth : From Microorganisms to Megacities , ” Vaclav Smil , a Czech-Canadian environmental scientist , complains that economists haven ’ t grasped “ the synergistic functioning of civilization and the biosphere , ” yet they “ maintain a monopoly on supplying their physically impossible narratives of continuing growth that guide decisions made by national governments and companies.
” Once confined to the margins , the ecological critique of economic growth has gained widespread attention .
At a United Nations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg declared , “ We are in the beginning of a mass extinction , and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth .
How dare you !
” The degrowth movement has its own academic journals and conferences .
Some of its adherents favor dismantling the entirety of global capitalism , not just the fossil-fuel industry .
Others envisage “ post-growth capitalism , ” in which production for profit would continue , but the economy would be reorganized along very different lines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Without Growth : Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow , ” Tim Jackson , a professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey , in England , calls on Western countries to shift their economies from mass-market production to local services—such as nursing , teaching , and handicrafts—that could be less resource-intensive .
Jackson doesn ’ t underestimate the scale of the changes , in social values as well as in production patterns , that such a transformation would entail , but he sounds an optimistic note : “ People can flourish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world is possible.
” Even within mainstream economics , the growth orthodoxy is being challenged , and not merely because of a heightened awareness of environmental perils .
In “ Good Economics for Hard Times , ” two winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics , Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo , point out that a larger G.D.P .
doesn ’ t necessarily mean a rise in human well-being—especially if it isn ’ t distributed equitably—and the pursuit of it can sometimes be counterproductive .
“ Nothing in either our theory or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ per capita is generally desirable , ” Banerjee and Duflo , a husband-and-wife team who teach at M.I.T.
, write .
The two made their reputations by applying rigorous experimental methods to investigate what types of policy interventions work in poor communities ; they conducted randomized controlled trials , in which one group of people was subjected to a given policy intervention—paying parents to keep their children in school , say—and a control group wasn ’ t .
Drawing on their findings , Banerjee and Duflo argue that , rather than chase “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concentrate on specific measures with proven benefits , such as helping the poorest members of society get access to health care , education , and social advancement .
Banerjee and Duflo also maintain that in advanced countries like the United States the misguided pursuit of economic growth since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution has contributed to a rise in inequality , mortality rates , and political polarization .
When the benefits of growth are mainly captured by an élite , they warn , social disaster can result .
That ’ s not to say that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ growth .
In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs , they noted that , since 1990 , the number of people living on less than $ 1.90 a day—the World Bank ’ s definition of extreme poverty—fell from nearly two billion to around seven hundred million .
“ In addition to increasing people ’ s income , steadily expanding G.D.P.s have allowed governments ( and others ) to spend more on schools , hospitals , medicines , and income transfers to the poor , ” they wrote .
Yet for advanced countries , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slow G.D.P .
growth may prove to be beneficial , especially if the result is that the fruits of growth are shared more widely .
In this sense , Banerjee and Duflo might be termed “ slowthers ” —a label that certainly applies to Dietrich Vollrath , an economist at the University of Houston and the author of “ Fully Grown : Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success.
” As his subtitle suggests , he thinks that slower rates of economic growth in advanced countries are nothing to worry about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
per person in the U.S. rose at an annual rate of more than three per cent .
Since 2000 , the growth rate has slowed to about two per cent .
( Donald Trump has not , as he promised , boosted over-all G.D.P .
growth to four or five per cent . )
The phenomenon of slow growth is often bemoaned as “ secular stagnation , ” a term popularized by Lawrence Summers , the Harvard economist and former Treasury Secretary .
Yet Vollrath argues that slower growth is appropriate for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as ours .
Unlike other growth skeptics , he doesn ’ t base his case on environmental concerns or rising inequality or the shortcomings of G.D.P .
as a measurement .
Rather , he explains this phenomenon as the result of personal choices—the core of economic orthodoxy .
Vollrath offers a detailed decomposition of the sources of economic growth , which uses a mathematical technique that the eminent M.I.T .
economist Robert Solow pioneered in the nineteen-fifties .
The movement of women into the workplace provided a onetime boost to the labor supply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dragged down the growth curve .
As countries like the United States have become richer and richer , Vollrath points out , their inhabitants have chosen to spend less time at work and to have smaller families—the result of higher wages and the advent of contraceptive pills .
G.D.P .
growth slows when the growth of the labor force declines .
But this isn ’ t any sort of failure , in Vollrath ’ s view : it reflects “ the advance of women ’ s rights and economic success.
” Vollrath estimates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in G.D.P .
growth can be accounted for by the decline in the growth of labor inputs .
He also cites a switch in spending patterns from tangible goods—such as clothes , cars , and furniture—to services , such as child care , health care , and spa treatments .
In 1950 , spending on services accounted for forty per cent of G.D.P .
; today , the proportion is more than seventy per cent .
And service industries , which tend to be labor-intensive , exhibit lower rates of productivity growth than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( The person who cuts your hair isn ’ t getting more efficient ; the plant that makes his or her scissors probably is . )
Since rising productivity is a key component of G.D.P .
growth , that growth will be further constrained by the expansion of the service sector .
But , again , this isn ’ t necessarily a failure .
“ In the end , that reallocation of economic activity away from goods and into services comes down to our success , ” Vollrath writes .
“ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ goods that this has freed up our money to spend on services .
”

In 1930, the English economist John Maynard Keynes took a break from writing about the problems of the interwar economy and indulged in a bit of futurology. In an essay entitled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” he speculated that by the year 2030 capital investment and technological progress would have raised living standards as much as eightfold, creating a society so rich that people would work as little as fifteen hours a week, devoting the rest of their time to leisure and other “non-economic purposes.” As striving for greater affluence faded, he predicted, “the love of money as a possession . . . will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity.”
This transformation hasn’t taken place yet, and most economic policymakers remain committed to maximizing the rate of economic growth. But Keynes’s predictions weren’t entirely off base. After a century in which G.D.P. per person has gone up more than sixfold in the United States, a vigorous debate has arisen about the feasibility and wisdom of creating and consuming ever more stuff, year after year. On the left, increasing alarm about climate change and other environmental threats has given birth to the “degrowth” movement, which calls on advanced countries to embrace zero or even negative G.D.P. growth. “The faster we produce and consume goods, the more we damage the environment,” Giorgos Kallis, an ecological economist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, writes in his manifesto, “Degrowth.” “There is no way to both have your cake and eat it, here. If humanity is not to destroy the planet’s life support systems, the global economy should slow down.” In “Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities,” Vaclav Smil, a Czech-Canadian environmental scientist, complains that economists haven’t grasped “the synergistic functioning of civilization and the biosphere,” yet they “maintain a monopoly on supplying their physically impossible narratives of continuing growth that guide decisions made by national governments and companies.”
Once confined to the margins, the ecological critique of economic growth has gained widespread attention. At a United Nations climate-change summit in September, the teen-age Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg declared, “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” The degrowth movement has its own academic journals and conferences. Some of its adherents favor dismantling the entirety of global capitalism, not just the fossil-fuel industry. Others envisage “post-growth capitalism,” in which production for profit would continue, but the economy would be reorganized along very different lines. In the influential book “Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow,” Tim Jackson, a professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey, in England, calls on Western countries to shift their economies from mass-market production to local services—such as nursing, teaching, and handicrafts—that could be less resource-intensive. Jackson doesn’t underestimate the scale of the changes, in social values as well as in production patterns, that such a transformation would entail, but he sounds an optimistic note: “People can flourish without endlessly accumulating more stuff. Another world is possible.”
Even within mainstream economics, the growth orthodoxy is being challenged, and not merely because of a heightened awareness of environmental perils. In “Good Economics for Hard Times,” two winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, point out that a larger G.D.P. doesn’t necessarily mean a rise in human well-being—especially if it isn’t distributed equitably—and the pursuit of it can sometimes be counterproductive. “Nothing in either our theory or the data proves the highest G.D.P. per capita is generally desirable,” Banerjee and Duflo, a husband-and-wife team who teach at M.I.T., write.
The two made their reputations by applying rigorous experimental methods to investigate what types of policy interventions work in poor communities; they conducted randomized controlled trials, in which one group of people was subjected to a given policy intervention—paying parents to keep their children in school, say—and a control group wasn’t. Drawing on their findings, Banerjee and Duflo argue that, rather than chase “the growth mirage,” governments should concentrate on specific measures with proven benefits, such as helping the poorest members of society get access to health care, education, and social advancement.
Banerjee and Duflo also maintain that in advanced countries like the United States the misguided pursuit of economic growth since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution has contributed to a rise in inequality, mortality rates, and political polarization. When the benefits of growth are mainly captured by an élite, they warn, social disaster can result.
That’s not to say that Banerjee and Duflo are opposed to economic growth. In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, they noted that, since 1990, the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day—the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty—fell from nearly two billion to around seven hundred million. “In addition to increasing people’s income, steadily expanding G.D.P.s have allowed governments (and others) to spend more on schools, hospitals, medicines, and income transfers to the poor,” they wrote. Yet for advanced countries, in particular, they think policies that slow G.D.P. growth may prove to be beneficial, especially if the result is that the fruits of growth are shared more widely. In this sense, Banerjee and Duflo might be termed “slowthers”—a label that certainly applies to Dietrich Vollrath, an economist at the University of Houston and the author of “Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success.”
As his subtitle suggests, he thinks that slower rates of economic growth in advanced countries are nothing to worry about. Between 1950 and 2000, G.D.P. per person in the U.S. rose at an annual rate of more than three per cent. Since 2000, the growth rate has slowed to about two per cent. (Donald Trump has not, as he promised, boosted over-all G.D.P. growth to four or five per cent.) The phenomenon of slow growth is often bemoaned as “secular stagnation,” a term popularized by Lawrence Summers, the Harvard economist and former Treasury Secretary. Yet Vollrath argues that slower growth is appropriate for a society as rich and industrially developed as ours. Unlike other growth skeptics, he doesn’t base his case on environmental concerns or rising inequality or the shortcomings of G.D.P. as a measurement. Rather, he explains this phenomenon as the result of personal choices—the core of economic orthodoxy.
Vollrath offers a detailed decomposition of the sources of economic growth, which uses a mathematical technique that the eminent M.I.T. economist Robert Solow pioneered in the nineteen-fifties. The movement of women into the workplace provided a onetime boost to the labor supply; in its aftermath, other trends dragged down the growth curve. As countries like the United States have become richer and richer, Vollrath points out, their inhabitants have chosen to spend less time at work and to have smaller families—the result of higher wages and the advent of contraceptive pills. G.D.P. growth slows when the growth of the labor force declines. But this isn’t any sort of failure, in Vollrath’s view: it reflects “the advance of women’s rights and economic success.”
Vollrath estimates that about two-thirds of the recent slowdown in G.D.P. growth can be accounted for by the decline in the growth of labor inputs. He also cites a switch in spending patterns from tangible goods—such as clothes, cars, and furniture—to services, such as child care, health care, and spa treatments. In 1950, spending on services accounted for forty per cent of G.D.P.; today, the proportion is more than seventy per cent. And service industries, which tend to be labor-intensive, exhibit lower rates of productivity growth than goods-producing industries, which are often factory-based. (The person who cuts your hair isn’t getting more efficient; the plant that makes his or her scissors probably is.) Since rising productivity is a key component of G.D.P. growth, that growth will be further constrained by the expansion of the service sector. But, again, this isn’t necessarily a failure. “In the end, that reallocation of economic activity away from goods and into services comes down to our success,” Vollrath writes. “We’ve gotten so productive at making goods that this has freed up our money to spend on services.”
Taken together, slower growth in the labor force and the shift to services can explain almost all the recent slowdown, according to Vollrath. He’s unimpressed by many other explanations that have been offered, such as sluggish rates of capital investment, rising trade pressures, soaring inequality, shrinking technological possibilities, or an increase in monopoly power. In his account, it all flows from the choices we’ve made: “Slow growth, it turns out, is the optimal response to massive economic success.”
Vollrath’s analysis implies that all the major economies are likely to see slower growth rates as their populations age—a pattern first established in Japan during the nineteen-nineties. But two-per-cent growth isn’t negligible. If the U.S. economy continues to expand at this rate, it will have doubled in size by 2055, and a century from now it will be almost eight times its current size. If you think about growth-compounding in other rich countries, and developing economies growing at somewhat faster rates, you can readily summon up scenarios in which, by the end of the next century, global G.D.P. has risen fiftyfold, or even a hundredfold.
Is such a scenario environmentally sustainable? Proponents of “green growth,” who now include many European governments, the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and all the remaining U.S. Democratic Presidential candidates, insist that it is. They say that, given the right policy measures and continued technological progress, we can enjoy perpetual growth and prosperity while also reducing carbon emissions and our consumption of natural resources. A 2018 report by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, an international group of economists, government officials, and business leaders, declared, “We are on the cusp of a new economic era: one where growth is driven by the interaction between rapid technological innovation, sustainable infrastructure investment, and increased resource productivity. We can have growth that is strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive.”


China’s L.B.J. Cliffhanger!

Last summer , when He Yujia was preparing to transition , at least in spirit , from the Texas Hill Country to the U.S. Senate , she began to receive anxious messages on Douban , a Chinese social-networking service where readers discuss books .
“ I want to know , boss , when you can translate the next few volumes of the Lindeng Yuehanxun biography , ” a reader wrote .
Another chimed in : “ After half a year , there ’ s still no news about ‘ Ladder of Promotion.
’ Do you have information about when it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the transliteration of Lyndon Johnson , and “ Ladder of Promotion ” — “ Jinjie zhi Ti ” —is the Chinese title of “ Means of Ascent , ” the second book of Robert Caro ’ s projected five-volume biography of the former President .
In the U.S. , some readers fret about the eighty-four-year-old Caro , whose pace is famously glacial .
( “ It ’ s heartwarming that so many people are worried that I won ’ t finish , ” Caro told Chris Wallace , of Fox News , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where He Yujia has been contracted to translate the first four Johnson books , reader concerns have nothing to do with health or speed .
Yujia is an engaging thirty-three-year-old who , apart from sporadic gigs as an amateur standup comedian , works seven days a week for as many as fourteen hours a day .
Words pour out of her like a mountain stream at the sunny end of that shrinking glacier .
She translated Caro ’ s first volume in an amazing four months , and “ Ladder of Promotion ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was finished by the end of 2018 , but it still hasn ’ t been published , and Yujia still hasn ’ t been paid .
That ’ s why the Chinese version of “ When will Johnson arrive ?
” is more annoying than heartwarming .
“ I don ’ t know , I ’ ve already submitted the manuscript long ago , ” Yujia responded to one Douban query .
“ Perhaps it ’ s because of an extreme strictness toward American writers.
” During a recent conversation in the twenty-sixth-floor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Chengdu , in southwestern China , she explained that political pressures are often not stated openly .
“ The editor doesn ’ t tell me anything about why they are holding out the CIP numbers , ” Yujia said , referring to the Cataloging in Publication number that the Chinese government requires for any book that is to be published .
For the past year , the numbers have not been approved for many American books .
Chen Liang , Yujia ’ s editor at Beijing Xiron Books , responded politely but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the delay .
The phrase he used was “ some accidental factors.
” For Chinese in the publishing industry , the freezing of American books seems anything but accidental .
Yujia has three books in limbo , including “ Slouching Towards Bethlehem ” and “ What ’ s Eating Gilbert Grape.
” Lu Jia , a fellow Chengdu-based translator , has four of her own awaiting publication .
Another of Lu ’ s finished books , “ Win Bigly , ” in which the Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams analyzes Donald Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the trade war .
“ Of course , nobody said that that ’ s the reason , ” Lu noted .
“ But everybody knows that that ’ s the reason.
” Such delays also reflect an over-all crackdown on media that has been carried out under President Xi Jinping .
As of yet , there ’ s no indication that Trump ’ s Phase 1 trade deal will free the backlog of American books .
Yujia doesn ’ t worry about things she can ’ t control , and during the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on “ Master of the Senate , ” Caro ’ s third volume .
Yujia , who has degrees from Beijing Foreign Studies University and the University of Hong Kong , has never been to the United States , but she has grown attached to Caro ’ s vision of the harsh Texas Hill Country .
She pointed to a description in the first book : “ Flash floods roared down the gullies now ( men called them ‘ gully-washers ’ or ‘ stump-jumpers ’ ) .
” Yujia rendered the last phrase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stakes.
” She explained that it brings to mind a martial-arts move called the plum-blossom stake , in which a master leaps among barriers .
“ My editor said , ‘ You made the flood look like a very strong kung-fu person who is mad !
’ ” In school , Yujia had learned little about Johnson .
“ I didn ’ t know he was so important in American history , ” she said .
“ In China , we hear about Washington , Kennedy , Clinton , Bush , and Obama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s very important to China.
” Before translating a novel , Yujia typically reads through to the end .
But for nonfiction she prefers to focus strictly on the facts as they accumulate , without having seen the conclusion .
At this point , she has a highly detailed image of Texas geography , along with vivid biographical knowledge of Johnson ’ s early mentors and rivals .
But she still doesn ’ t know the exact endgame of his political career .
She commented that , while she ’ s aware that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ War , she ’ s not sure if he resigned or left in some other fashion .
When her visitor offered to give the short version , she declined .
“ I want to wait , ” she said .
♦

He Yujia Illustration by João Fazenda
Last summer, when He Yujia was preparing to transition, at least in spirit, from the Texas Hill Country to the U.S. Senate, she began to receive anxious messages on Douban, a Chinese social-networking service where readers discuss books. “I want to know, boss, when you can translate the next few volumes of the Lindeng Yuehanxun biography,” a reader wrote. Another chimed in: “After half a year, there’s still no news about ‘Ladder of Promotion.’ Do you have information about when it will be published?”
Lindeng Yuehanxun is the transliteration of Lyndon Johnson, and “Ladder of Promotion”—“Jinjie zhi Ti”—is the Chinese title of “Means of Ascent,” the second book of Robert Caro’s projected five-volume biography of the former President. In the U.S., some readers fret about the eighty-four-year-old Caro, whose pace is famously glacial. (“It’s heartwarming that so many people are worried that I won’t finish,” Caro told Chris Wallace, of Fox News, last year.) In China, where He Yujia has been contracted to translate the first four Johnson books, reader concerns have nothing to do with health or speed. Yujia is an engaging thirty-three-year-old who, apart from sporadic gigs as an amateur standup comedian, works seven days a week for as many as fourteen hours a day. Words pour out of her like a mountain stream at the sunny end of that shrinking glacier. She translated Caro’s first volume in an amazing four months, and “Ladder of Promotion” went just as fast. The translation was finished by the end of 2018, but it still hasn’t been published, and Yujia still hasn’t been paid. That’s why the Chinese version of “When will Johnson arrive?” is more annoying than heartwarming. “I don’t know, I’ve already submitted the manuscript long ago,” Yujia responded to one Douban query. “Perhaps it’s because of an extreme strictness toward American writers.”
During a recent conversation in the twenty-sixth-floor apartment that Yujia shares with her husband in Chengdu, in southwestern China, she explained that political pressures are often not stated openly. “The editor doesn’t tell me anything about why they are holding out the CIP numbers,” Yujia said, referring to the Cataloging in Publication number that the Chinese government requires for any book that is to be published. For the past year, the numbers have not been approved for many American books. Chen Liang, Yujia’s editor at Beijing Xiron Books, responded politely but with tactical vagueness to an e-mail inquiry about the delay. The phrase he used was “some accidental factors.”
For Chinese in the publishing industry, the freezing of American books seems anything but accidental. Yujia has three books in limbo, including “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” Lu Jia, a fellow Chengdu-based translator, has four of her own awaiting publication. Another of Lu’s finished books, “Win Bigly,” in which the Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams analyzes Donald Trump’s persuasive abilities, was cancelled entirely during the trade war. “Of course, nobody said that that’s the reason,” Lu noted. “But everybody knows that that’s the reason.” Such delays also reflect an over-all crackdown on media that has been carried out under President Xi Jinping.
As of yet, there’s no indication that Trump’s Phase 1 trade deal will free the backlog of American books. Yujia doesn’t worry about things she can’t control, and during the recent visit she was hard at work on “Master of the Senate,” Caro’s third volume. Yujia, who has degrees from Beijing Foreign Studies University and the University of Hong Kong, has never been to the United States, but she has grown attached to Caro’s vision of the harsh Texas Hill Country. She pointed to a description in the first book: “Flash floods roared down the gullies now (men called them ‘gully-washers’ or ‘stump-jumpers’).” Yujia rendered the last phrase as zhuangshangtiao: “jumping over the stakes.” She explained that it brings to mind a martial-arts move called the plum-blossom stake, in which a master leaps among barriers. “My editor said, ‘You made the flood look like a very strong kung-fu person who is mad!’ ”
In school, Yujia had learned little about Johnson. “I didn’t know he was so important in American history,” she said. “In China, we hear about Washington, Kennedy, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. And Nixon, because he’s very important to China.”
Before translating a novel, Yujia typically reads through to the end. But for nonfiction she prefers to focus strictly on the facts as they accumulate, without having seen the conclusion. At this point, she has a highly detailed image of Texas geography, along with vivid biographical knowledge of Johnson’s early mentors and rivals. But she still doesn’t know the exact endgame of his political career. She commented that, while she’s aware that Johnson was brought down by the Vietnam War, she’s not sure if he resigned or left in some other fashion. When her visitor offered to give the short version, she declined. “I want to wait,” she said. ♦


newyorker--2020-02-03--“Boy,” by Annelyse Gelman

“Boy,” by Annelyse Gelman

He found himself kneeling in mud And asked the river for forgiveness .
The river punished him with silence .
@ @ @ @ @ consumed him , The fear of doing it wrong , and now— He walked among @ @ @ @ @ , uncertain where to start .
Afraid of looking at them wrong or in The @ @ @ @ @ life Even the streamlets , the streamlets had Shied from him like mice .
He @ @ @ @ @ In the clearing the dew Evaporates .
The grass looks dull , dutiful .
One @ @ @ @ @ of feeling Slide around his body without touching his Body .
His body is a @ @ @ @ @ Snow .
In him on him falls the snow .
He is Buried , utterly @ @ @ @ @ buried by rain .

Audio: Read by the author.
He found himself kneeling in mud
And asked the river for forgiveness.
The river punished him with silence.
His whole life it had consumed him,
The fear of doing it wrong, and now—
He walked among the trees
Like a gallery, uncertain where to start.
Afraid of looking at them wrong or in
The wrong order. His whole life
Even the streamlets, the streamlets had
Shied from him like mice. He _____
To be _____. In the clearing the dew
Evaporates. The grass looks dull, dutiful.
One by one, the components of feeling
Slide around his body without touching his
Body. His body is a snow globe. His thoughts
Snow. In him on him falls the snow. He is
Buried, utterly, like the sea is buried by rain.


newyorker--2020-02-03--Slide Show: New Yorker Cartoons February 3, 2020

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The material on this site may not be reproduced , @ @ @ @ @ or otherwise used , except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast .

“I think it was Fitzgerald who wrote, ‘The very rich are different from you and me.’ ”
Cartoon by Sam Gross


newyorker--2020-02-03--“Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts,” by Anthony Veasna So

Tevy looks down at the back of her hands .
She examines the lightness of her brown skin .
She remembers how in elementary school she always got so mad at the white kids who misidentified her as Chinese , sometimes even getting in fights with them on the bus .
And she remembers her father consoling her in his truck at the bus stop .
“ I know I joke around a lot , ” he said once , his hand on her shoulder .
“ But you are Khmer , through and through .
You should know that.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ reflection .
His vision of the world disappoints her—the idea that people are limited always to what their fathers tell them .
Then Tevy notices her sister reeling in discomfort .
“ No , ” Kayley says , hitting the table with her fists .
“ You have to have a better answer than that .
You can ’ t just come in here almost every night , order an apple fritter , not eat it , and then tell us you don ’ t like doughnuts.
” Breathing heavily , Kayley leans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cutting into her ribs .
“ Kayley , ” Tevy says , concerned .
“ What ’ s going on with you ?
” “ Be quiet !
” the man yells abruptly , still staring out the window , violently swinging his arm .
Shocked into a frozen silence , the sisters don ’ t know how to respond , and can only watch as the man stands up , clenching his fists , and charges into the center of the seating area .
Right then , a woman—probably Khmer , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into Chuck ’ s Donuts and starts striking the man with her purse .
She is covered in bruises , the sisters see , her left eye nearly swollen shut .
They stay in the booth , pressed against the cold glass of the window .
“ You beat your own wife , and you spy on her , ” she says , now battering the man , her husband , with slaps .
“ You ’ re— ” The man tries to push his wife away , but she hurls her body @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the ground , the woman on top of the man , slapping his head over and over again .
“ You ’ re scum , you ’ re scum , ” the woman shrieks , and the sisters have no idea how to stop the violence that is unfolding before them , or whether they should try .
They can not even say whom they feel aligned with—the man , to whose presence they have grown attached , or the bruised woman , whose explosive anger toward the man appears warranted .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Donuts ’ past , before the recession forced everyone into paralysis , when the dark energy of their home town barrelled into the fluorescent seating area .
They remember the drive-by gang shootings , the homeless people lying in the alley in heroin-induced comas , the robberies of neighboring businesses , and even of Chuck ’ s Donuts once ; they remember how , every now and then , they would feel panicked that their mother wouldn ’ t make it home .
They remember the underbelly of their glorious past @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the woman .
He screams , “ You ’ ve betrayed me.
” He punches her face .
The sisters shut their eyes and wish for the man to go away , and the woman , too .
They wish these people had never set foot in Chuck ’ s Donuts , and they keep their eyes closed , holding each other , until suddenly they hear a loud blow , then another , followed by a dull thud .
Their eyes flick open to find their mother helping the woman sit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cast-iron pan , the one that ’ s used when the rare customer orders an egg sandwich , and beside it , unconscious , the man , blood leaking from his head .
Brushing hair out of the woman ’ s face , their mother consoles this stranger .
Their mother and the woman remain like this for a moment , neither of them acknowledging the man on the ground .
Still seated in the booth with Kayley clinging to her , Tevy thinks about the signs , all the signs there have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She looks down at the ground , at the blood seeping onto the floor , how the color almost matches the red laminate of the countertops .
She wonders if the man , in the unconscious layers of his mind , still feels Chinese .
Then Sothy asks the woman , “ Are you O.K .
?
” But the woman , struggling to stand up , just looks at her husband .
“ Fuck , ” the woman says , shaking her head .
“ Fuck , fuck , fuck.
” “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sothy says , reaching to touch her , but the woman is already rushing out the door .
Emotion drains out of Sothy ’ s face .
She is stunned by this latest abandonment , speechless , and so is Tevy , but Kayley calls after the woman , yelling , even though it ’ s too late , “ You can ’ t just leave !
” And then Sothy bursts into laughter .
She knows that this isn ’ t the appropriate response , that it will leave her daughters more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there are so many present liabilities—for instance , the fact that she has severely injured one of her own customers , and not even to protect her children from a vicious gangster .
But she can ’ t stop laughing .
She can ’ t stop thinking of the absurdity of this situation , how if she were in the woman ’ s shoes she also would have left .
Finally , Sothy calms herself .
“ Help me clean this up , ” she says , facing her daughters , giving the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ground , as though he were any other mess .
“ Customers can ’ t see blood so close to the doughnuts.
” Both Sothy and Tevy agree that Kayley is too young to handle blood , so , while her mother and sister prop the man up against the counter and begin cleaning the floors , Kayley calls 911 from behind the counter .
She tells the operator that the man is unconscious , that he ’ s taken a hit to the head , and then recites the address of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re very close to the hospital , ” the operator responds .
“ Can ’ t you take him over yourself ?
” Kayley hangs up and says , “ We should drive him to the hospital ourselves.
” Then , watching her mother and sister , she asks , “ Aren ’ t we supposed to not , you know , mess with a crime scene ?
” Balancing herself against the doughnut display case , Kayley watches the blood dissolve into pink suds of soap that get wiped away by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ father .
She wants to know whether he ever hit her mother , and , if so , whether her mother ever hit him back , and whether that ’ s the reason her mother so naturally came to the woman ’ s defense .
As Tevy wipes away the last trails of blood , she , too , thinks about their father , but she recognizes that even if their father had been violent with their mother it wouldn ’ t answer , fully , any questions concerning her parents ’ relationship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ validity of the idea that every Khmer woman—or just every woman—has to deal with someone like their father , and what the outcome is of this patient , or desperate , dealing .
Can the act of enduring result in psychic wounds that bleed into a person ’ s thoughts and actions , Tevy wonders , affecting how that person experiences the world ?
Only Sothy ’ s mind is free right now of her daughters ’ father .
She thinks instead about the woman—whether her swollen eye and bruises will heal completely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for her .
Sothy pities the woman .
Even though she ’ s afraid that the man will sue her , that the police will not believe her side of the story , she feels grateful that she is not the woman .
She understands now , more than ever , how lucky she is to have rid her family of her ex-husband ’ s presence .
Sothy drops her mop back into its yellow bucket .
“ Let ’ s take him to the hospital.
” And Tevy responds , “ Well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him here.
” “ Stop fighting and help me , ” Sothy says , walking over to the man .
She carefully lifts him up , then wraps his arm around her shoulders .
Tevy and Kayley rush to the man ’ s other side and do the same .
Outside , the street lamp is still broken , but they have grown used to the darkness .
Struggling to keep the man upright , they lock the door , roll down the steel shutters , whose existence they ’ d almost forgotten @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Donuts from the world .
Then they drag the man ’ s heavy body toward their parked car .
The man , barely conscious , begins to groan .
The three women of Chuck ’ s Donuts have a variation of the same thought .
This man , they realize , didn ’ t mean much at all to them , lent no greater significance to their pain .
They can hardly believe they ’ ve wasted so much time wondering about him .
Yes , they think , we know this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our whole lives .
♦

And Tevy says, “Then you’re contradicting yourself, aren’t you?” Her face still burning, she tries to recapture an even, analytical tone. “So which is it? Am I in love with Dad or do I, like, hate him?” she asks. “You are so stupid. I wasn’t saying the man was hot, anyway. I just pointed out that he’s not, like, ugly.”
“I’m tired of this bullshit,” Kayley responds. “You guys treat me like I’m nothing.”
Surveying the damage her daughters have caused, Sothy snatches the photograph from Tevy. “Clean this mess up!” she yells, and then walks out of the seating area, exasperated.
In the bathroom, Sothy splashes water on her face. She looks at her reflection in the mirror, noticing the bags under her eyes, the wrinkles fracturing her skin, then she looks down at the photo she’s laid next to the faucet. Her ex-husband’s youth taunts her with its boyish charm. She cannot imagine the young man in this image—decked out in his tight polo and acid-washed jeans, high on his newfound citizenship—becoming the father who has infected her daughters with so much anxious energy, and who has abandoned her, middle-aged, with obligations she can barely fulfill alone.
Stuffing the photo into the pocket of her apron, Sothy gathers her composure. Had she not left her daughters, she would have seen the man get up from the booth, turn to face the two girls, and walk into the dark hallway that leads to the bathroom. She would not have opened the bathroom door to find this man towering over her with his silent, sulking presence. And she would never have recognized it, the uncanny resemblance to her ex-husband that her younger daughter has been raving about all night.
But Sothy does now register the resemblance, along with a sudden pain in her gut. The man’s gaze slams into her, like a punch. It beams a focussed chaos, a dim malice, and even though the man merely drifts past her, taking her place in the bathroom, Sothy can’t help but think, They’ve come for us.
Ever since her divorce, Sothy has worked through her days weighed down by the pressure of supporting her daughters without her ex-husband. Exhaustion grinds away at her bones. Her wrists rattle with carpal-tunnel syndrome. And rest is not an option. If anything, it consumes more of her energy. A lull in her day, a moment to reflect, and the resentment comes crashing down over her. It isn’t the cheating she’s mad about, the affair, her daughters’ frivolous stepmother who calls her with misguided attempts at reconciliation. Her attraction to her ex-husband, and his to her, dissolved at a steady rate after her first pregnancy. The same cannot be said of their financial contract. That imploded spectacularly.
Her daughters have no idea, but when Sothy opened Chuck’s Donuts it was with the help of a generous loan from her ex-husband’s distant uncle, an influential business tycoon based in Phnom Penh with a reputation for funding political corruption. She’d heard wild rumors about this uncle, even here in California—that he was responsible for the imprisonment of the Prime Minister’s main political opponent, that he’d gained his riches by joining a criminal organization of ex-Khmer Rouge officials, and that he’d arranged, on behalf of powerful and petty Khmer Rouge sympathizers, the murder of Haing S. Ngor. Sothy didn’t know if she wanted to accept the uncle’s money, to be indebted to such dark forces, to commit to a life in which she would always be afraid that hit men disguised as Khmer-American gangbangers might gun her and her family down and then cover it up as a simple mugging gone wrong. If even Haing S. Ngor, the Oscar-winning movie star of “The Killing Fields,” wasn’t safe from this fate, if he couldn’t escape the spite of the powerful, how could Sothy think that her own family would be spared? Then again, what else was Sothy supposed to do, with a G.E.D., a husband who worked as a janitor, and two small children? How else could she and her husband jump-start their dire finances? What skills did she have, other than frying dough?
Deep down, Sothy has always understood that it was a bad idea to get into business with her ex-husband’s uncle, who, for all she knew, could have bankrolled Pol Pot’s coup. And so, now, seeing the man’s resemblance to her ex-husband, she wonders if he could be some distant gangster cousin. She fears that her past has finally caught up with her.
For several days, the man does not visit Chuck’s Donuts. But Sothy’s worries only deepen. They root themselves into her bones. Her daughters’ constant musings about the man only intensify her suspicion that he is a relative of her former uncle-in-law. He has come to take their lives, to torture the money out of them, perhaps to hold her daughters as collateral, investments to sell on the black market. Still, she can’t risk being impulsive, lest she provoke him. And there’s the possibility, of course, that he’s a complete stranger. Surely he would have harmed them by now. Why this performance of waiting? She keeps herself on guard, tells her daughters to be wary of the man, to call for her if he walks through the door.
Tevy has started writing her philosophy paper, and Kayley is helping her. “On Whether Being Khmer Means You Understand Khmer People,” the paper is tentatively titled. Tevy’s professor requires students to title their essays in the style of “On Certainty,” as if starting a title with the word “On” makes it philosophical. She decides to structure her paper as a catalogue of assumptions made about the man based on the idea that he is Khmer and that the persons making these assumptions—Tevy and Kayley—are also Khmer. Each assumption will be accompanied by a paragraph discussing the validity of the assumption, which will be determined based on answers provided by the man, to questions that Tevy and Kayley will ask him directly. Both Tevy and Kayley agree to keep the nature of the paper secret from their mother.
The sisters spend several nights refining their list of assumptions about the man. “Maybe he also grew up with parents who never liked each other,” Kayley says one night when the downtown appears less bleak, the dust and pollution lending the dark sky a red glow.
“Well, it’s not like Khmer people marry for love,” Tevy responds.
Kayley looks out the window for anything worth observing, but sees only empty streets, the dull orange of the Little Caesars, which her mother hates because the manager won’t allow her customers to park in his excessively big lot. “It just seems like he’s always looking for someone, you know?” Kayley says. “Maybe he loves someone but that person doesn’t love him back.”
“Do you remember what Dad said about marriage?” Tevy asks. “He said that, after the camps, people paired up based on their skills. Two people who knew how to cook wouldn’t marry, because that would be, like, a waste. If one person in the marriage cooked, then the other person should know how to sell food. He said marriage is like the show ‘Survivor,’ where you make alliances in order to live longer. He thought ‘Survivor’ was actually the most Khmer thing possible, and he would definitely win it, because the genocide was the best training he could’ve got.”
“What were their skills?” Kayley asks. “Mom and Dad’s?”
“The answer to that question is probably the reason they didn’t work out,” Tevy says.
“What does this have to do with the man?” Kayley asks.
And Tevy responds, “Well, if Khmer people marry for skills, as Dad says, maybe it means it’s harder for Khmer people to know how to love. Maybe we’re just bad at it—loving, you know—and maybe that’s the man’s problem.”
“Have you ever been in love?” Kayley asks.
“No,” Tevy says, and they sit in silence. They can hear their mother baking in the kitchen, the routine clanging of mixers and trays, a string of sounds that always just fails to coalesce into melody.
Tevy wonders if her mother has ever loved someone romantically, if her mother is even capable of reaching beyond the realm of survival, if her mother has ever been granted any freedom from worry, and if her mother’s present carries the ability to dilate, for even a brief moment, into its own plane of suspended existence, separate from past or future. Kayley, on the other hand, wonders if her mother misses her father, and, if not, whether this means that Kayley’s own feelings of gloom, of isolation, of longing, are less valid than she believes. She wonders if the violent chasm between her parents also exists within her own body, because isn’t she just a mix of all those antithetical genes?
“Mom should start smoking,” Kayley says.
And Tevy asks, “Why?”
“It’d force her to take breaks,” Kayley says. “Every time she wanted to smoke, she’d stop working, go outside, and smoke.”
“Depends on what would kill her faster,” Tevy says. “Smoking or working too much.”
Then Kayley asks, softly, “Do you think Dad loves his new wife?”
Tevy answers, “He better.”
Here’s how Sothy and her ex-husband were supposed to handle their deal with the uncle: Every month, Sothy would give her then husband twenty per cent of Chuck’s Donuts’ profits. Every month, her then husband would wire that money to his uncle. And every month, they would be one step closer to paying off their loan before anyone with ties to criminal activity could bat an eyelash.
Here’s what actually happened: One day, weeks before she discovered that her husband had conceived two sons with another woman while they were married, Sothy received a call at Chuck’s Donuts. It was a man speaking in Khmer, his accent thick and pure. At first, Sothy hardly understood what he was saying. His sentences were too fluid, his pronunciation too proper. He didn’t truncate his words, the way so many Khmer-American immigrants did, and Sothy found herself lulled into a daze by those long-lost syllables. Then she heard what the man’s words actually meant. He was the accountant of her husband’s uncle. He was asking about their loan, whether they had any intention of paying it back. It had been years, and the uncle hadn’t received any payments, the accountant said with menacing regret.
Sothy later found out—from her husband’s guilt-stricken mistress, of all people—that her husband had used the profits she’d given him, the money intended to pay off their loan, to support his second family. In the divorce settlement, Sothy agreed not to collect child support, in exchange for sole ownership of Chuck’s Donuts, for custody of their daughters, and for her ex-husband’s promise to talk to his uncle and to eventually pay off their loan, this time with his own money. He had never intended to cheat his uncle, he proclaimed. He had simply fallen in love with another woman. It was true love. What else could he do? And, of course, he had an obligation to his other children, the sons who bore his name.


A Deadly Mistake

One morning in August , Toth responded to a call from an old brown brick apartment building north of Columbus .
It resembled a two-story motel , with exterior staircases and iron railings .
The referring detective told Toth that a woman and her boyfriend had fallen asleep together the previous night : “ She wakes up this morning , about 8 a.m.—he ’ s fuckin ’ dead.
” The girlfriend was sitting outside with a neighbor , wearing a pink tie-dyed shirt , black leggings , and Nike slides .
Toth , noticing that the woman had uncontrollable jitters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leg.
” Upstairs , in Apartment H , the dead man lay face up at the foot of a mattress on the living-room floor .
He was bare-chested , and wearing dungarees and dark socks .
Foamy vomit had run from the left side of his mouth and down his face .
The inside of his left forearm held needle marks .
The detectives looked around .
The apartment was largely empty , but on a dresser they found a charred spoon , scales , baggies , and a razor blade .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; in one corner was an aluminum bat .
There was a deck of cards , a bunch of dice , and a scorecard pencilled with players ’ names : Daddy , Baby .
Baby was up by one .
Next to the body lay a pack of Marlboros and a purple lighter .
A tiny photograph of a woman was taped to the pack .
That ’ s how personal property is labelled in rehab , one of the detectives pointed out .
The woman in the photograph wasn ’ t the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in jail .
Toth put the girlfriend in the front seat of his unmarked police vehicle and asked for an explanation .
Detective Chuck Clark , whose case it was , sat in the back , listening closely .
The girlfriend told the investigators that whatever had killed her boyfriend must have come from elsewhere .
She said , “ I know he found something in that cigarette pack—I know it !
I can feel it in my fucking soul !
” The detectives hadn ’ t found anything in the pack except @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saw something in that cigarette pack.
” The girlfriend claimed that she ’ d spent the night with her head on her boyfriend ’ s chest , which also seemed dubious : in many overdoses , loud “ agonal ” breathing precedes death .
Another detective , listening at the car ’ s open window , finally murmured , “ Code B , ” which meant to arrest her .
Toth gave the woman one last chance .
He said , “ Your boyfriend is no longer here , and all we want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what happened , ” she said .
Toth told her , “ I think you know something.
” The woman , as if suddenly comprehending her precarious position , said , “ Come with me.
” They all filed back into the apartment .
In the bedroom , she reached into the closet and , sobbing , retrieved a baggie of beige powder from the overhead tracks of the sliding door .
She had made things better for herself by giving up the drugs , but worse by lying .
The detective who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ I just don ’ t have the patience for that shit .
She knew what fucking killed him.
” ( The man died of a combination of cocaine , fentanyl , and acetylfentanyl , a synthetic opioid that can be up to a hundred times more powerful than morphine ; on the street , it ’ s known as Apache , Jackpot , and China White . )
At the very least , the detectives could charge the girlfriend with obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence .
It was also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involuntary manslaughter , and let the courts figure it out .
It fell to Clark whether or not to arrest the woman .
Toth assured him that he ’ d back him whatever he decided .
Clark thought for a moment , then said , “ Personally , I don ’ t think she ought to be Code B ’ d. ” With that , the woman escaped Jamie Maynard ’ s fate .
Not long ago , Jamie ’ s mom asked her , “ Would you be alive right now if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were sitting in the family room of Frank and Debbie ’ s house one afternoon .
Jamie thought for a minute and said , “ Probably not.
” She has now been sober for three years .
Whenever I visited the Bartons , Jamie ’ s parents always sat together quietly , on their sectional sofa , listening to their daughter describe her life .
At one point , Debbie said , “ I don ’ t understand the whole addiction thing , so then I get really mad.
” Addiction , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Jamie told her mom , “ It literally changes the chemicals in your brain.
” According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse , addiction is a complex brain disease— “ a medical illness , ” not a “ moral failing.
” Northeastern ’ s Action Lab notes that addiction “ alters brain neurochemistry such that it compels a person to satisfy cravings despite recognized negative consequences.
” In 2015 , both Jamie and Courtney would have suffered “ intolerable distress ” at the prospect of being unable to use heroin ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had diabolically transformed their lives into what the NIDA calls “ a landscape of cues and triggers , like a video-game environment cunningly designed to pose the greatest challenge to his or her willpower at every turn.
” A twisted distinction of overdose-homicide cases is that many defendants need the same mental-health and addiction treatments that are offered to survivors of an overdose .
The laws purport to protect life , but they may actually increase fatalities : a witness to an overdose may be less likely to dial 911 , for fear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laws , which provide immunity to people who call for help , don ’ t apply to overdose-homicide cases .
According to the Northeastern study , the statutes “ create a quandary for people calling 911 : you ( probably ) won ’ t get in trouble if the person experiencing an accidental overdose event survives , but if death occurs , you ’ re calling the cops on yourself.
” While Jamie was in prison , her parents took care of her newborn daughter and her sons .
( Timothy violated the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back in prison . )
After she got out , she returned to living with them .
She and Jeremy resumed their relationship .
Three times a week , they attend an A.A. meeting together .
Even though Jamie is no longer incarcerated , her punishment , she discovered , has not ended .
Her trafficking charge can eventually be expunged , but an F1—a first-degree felony—is for life .
Barring a pardon or a special type of appeal , which she can not afford , she will always be ineligible for certain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her gaming license .
Last August , desperate after months of looking for a job , she walked into a temp agency and told a supervisor the whole story .
The agency found her a job as a janitor at a factory .
Jamie got up at five-thirty every morning to mop floors and clean toilets .
She was home by the time her kids got off the school bus .
She took weekend and holiday shifts , for the overtime .
In October , she received a promotion , to quality control @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She would like a full-fledged job at the plant but has delayed applying , fearing that she ’ ll fail the company ’ s mandatory background check .
Jamie sometimes regrets not allowing her case to go to trial .
She wonders if there shouldn ’ t be a less severe kind of criminal charge for defendants who are not high-level traffickers .
She wonders , too , what a jury would have made of Courtney ’ s autopsy , which revealed that she died not strictly of a heroin overdose but , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heroin and alprazolam—Xanax .
Other substances found in her bloodstream included the sedative lorazepam and the depression medication Trazodone .
In another case , in nearby Licking County , an appeals court recently overturned a conviction in a case involving a mixture of heroin and cocaine .
And last year the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down a conviction because prosecutors failed to prove that the defendant knew that the heroin he ’ d given a schoolmate would kill him .
Because overdoses are often medically ambiguous , defendants might be wise to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases to trial .
Leukel , the Florida attorney , told me , “ The hammer of the criminal-justice system carries so much weight , people are accepting responsibility for things they shouldn ’ t be accepting responsibility for.
” If more prosecutors began losing such cases , they might stop making overdose-homicide charges against low-level offenders , especially people struggling with drug addiction themselves .
This past December , the family of a Franklin County man who died after a friend gave him heroin asked the court not to impose a prison @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , would be “ the worst possible outcome.
” The dead man ’ s sister told the judge , “ It could easily have been the other way around.
” ♦

Courtney, whose last name was Penix, worked as a nanny in Worthington Hills, a suburb of Columbus. She had a boyfriend who lived near Dayton; on Facebook, she told her friends that she was in the first stable relationship of her life. Recently, she had begun spending most nights with him, then driving to Columbus for work. She started texting Jamie when she came to town. In early March, she wrote, “Hey i know someone with xanax if u ever have anyone that wants some.” Jamie wasn’t interested.
Several days later, Jamie heard from Courtney again: “Hey can u get h.” When Jamie said that she could probably find some, “in an hour or so,” Courtney said, “Damn. U can’t make it sooner?” As they discussed when and where to meet, Courtney said, “I just need to leave my house so my parents don’t question me.” The next night, she told Jamie, “That was some good shit u got.” Jamie asked, “You want more?”
Jamie and Courtney traded calls and texts throughout the month. March 20th: Courtney complained about a “bitch” who had asked her for drugs, and then balked after “I told her either she pays me 25 for em or gives me gas money.” March 22nd: Courtney asked Jamie to cover her for Xanax, but she declined. At the end of March, when no one in the Hilltop seemed to have Xanax, Courtney asked about heroin, noting, “Idk if it will help my withdrawals but I can try I guess.”
In early April, Courtney wanted subs and Xanax but couldn’t leave work. Jamie offered to bring them to her, before reporting to the casino. Courtney gave Jamie her employers’ address, saying, “Just make sure nothing happens please, I have 2 kids here.” Jamie, whose sons were five and three, replied that she would “never put kids in danger.”
Jamie never stole to support her addiction or smoked when her children were around. She tended to respond to Courtney like a patient older sister. When Courtney nagged her for running late, Jamie didn’t react; when Courtney asked her to leave drugs in an unlocked car, for pickup, she refused. Courtney said that she had recently been robbed at gunpoint, and Jamie worried that she would get herself killed.
On April 25th, Courtney headed to Columbus for her older sister’s birthday party. Joking that her boyfriend was driving her nuts, she told Jamie, “I’m about to do the rest of these Xanax,” adding that when the pills were gone she’d “be fucked.” Jamie, recognizing Courtney’s fear of withdrawal, replied, “Well worst case scenario I can get you dope and that’ll help.”
Before Jamie could track anything down, Courtney found her own supply of Xanax. She asked if Jamie wanted some. Jamie said, “No I’m good.”
April 27, 2015, was a blustery Monday. Courtney asked Jamie for Xanax again. When an hour and a half elapsed, with no response, she requested “150 worth” of heroin “and a rig,” meaning a needle and a syringe.
Jamie had already planned to use, before her night shift. By 5 p.m., she was at her dealer’s house, smoking. As the dealer measured out Courtney’s share, Jamie checked in, by text. Courtney told her, “I just tried to get more money from those check loan places and they wouldn’t do it lol.”
“Lmao,” Jamie replied. “I just got you $175 worth plus two rigs so you owe me $180.”
They agreed to meet outside a Walmart on Hilliard-Rome Road, a corridor dense with fast-food restaurants and big-box chains. At around 5:20 p.m., Jamie parked next to Courtney’s Dodge Neon, got out, and spent the next two minutes talking with her. When she noticed Courtney slurring her words, she asked her, “Did you just take Xanax?” Combining heroin and Xanax produced the coveted Cadillac high, but every addict knew that the combination was dangerous. Courtney assured Jamie that she hadn’t taken Xanax since the previous night—Jamie believed her when she said, “I’m just sick.”
Jamie thought about how “livid” she’d be if another user, inches away, withheld the substance that would immediately make her well. She handed over the dope. The next text from Courtney’s phone arrived shortly after eleven o’clock. It said, “Courtney has passed away from an overdose.”
At first, Jamie thought that someone was playing a horrible prank, and didn’t respond. The next day, she returned to the Hilltop, and mentioned the text to her dealer. He warned her, “If the police come to talk to you, you’d better not mention me.” Jamie assured him that she wouldn’t. She later told me, “You always hear those stories about people telling who their dealer was, and then their family ends up dead.”
Jamie spent the summer expecting the police to question her about drugs. But what really anguished her was the thought that Courtney might still be alive were it not for their meeting. No longer concerned with her own life, Jamie spent more and more time high on heroin.
On August 12th, she had just begun her Wednesday-night shift when a casino security guard pulled her off the floor. Two plainclothes detectives from the Special Investigations Unit of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office were waiting to question her. Jamie responded to their small talk amiably, and signed a document acknowledging that she understood her legal rights.
Their initial questions were simple: Where do you live? Are you married? How old are your children?
Then: How did you know Courtney? Through a mutual friend, Jamie said. The older of the two officers, a sergeant, asked, “Did you ever move any other kind of drugs for him, other than Suboxone?” Jamie said no.
“Listen, we’re not here to arrest you for drug trafficking,” the sergeant told her. When was the last time she’d seen Courtney?
“I got a text message saying she was dead,” Jamie said, adding that she’d seen her that day.
“Do you remember what you guys did?”
“She was trying to find drugs.”
What kind of drugs? “Anything to make her well.” Did Jamie “help her out”? Jamie said that she couldn’t remember.
The sergeant told her he needed the truth: “We want to know where the dope came from that you gave to her.”
Phil and Susan Penix, whose daughter Courtney took drugs supplied by Maynard, supported Maynard’s prosecution. Photograph by Justine Kurland for The New Yorker
Jamie couldn’t imagine giving up her dealer’s name. Panicked, she said, “I want a lawyer then.”
The sergeant informed her that she was the subject of a homicide investigation. The charge would be involuntary manslaughter. Under state law, her offense would, like rape and aggravated robbery, be a felony of the first degree.
When Jamie’s parents learned of the investigation, they came to several devastating realizations at once: their daughter had a heroin addiction; her stable job and her improved appearance had been part of a sustained deception; she was in profound legal trouble. A young woman just like Jamie was dead. Frank and Debbie couldn’t imagine what Courtney’s family was going through, any more than they could fathom the idea of Jamie—who had never been in legal trouble—being held responsible for a homicide.
Eight days later, when Jamie reported for work, investigators were waiting to arrest her. They confiscated her phone, expecting her texts to match Courtney’s; they swabbed the inside of her mouth, expecting her DNA to align with forensic evidence collected from Courtney’s car.
After Jamie spent the night in the county jail, her parents bailed her out and took her home. Cut off from heroin, she was soon, as she later told me, “flopping on the floor like a fish.” One of her sisters drove her to the emergency room, and Jamie spent the next few days in hospital detox.
Jamie and her family met with Mark Collins, a former Franklin County prosecutor who was now a well-known criminal-defense attorney in Columbus. Jamie’s situation infuriated him. More and more, law-enforcement officials and prosecutors were treating fatal overdoses as homicide cases. Overdose deaths were a tragedy, Collins believed, but they weren’t crimes unless the drugs had been given maliciously. What Jamie needed was treatment, not prison.
Jamie faced a kind of criminal prosecution that takes various forms, depending on the jurisdiction. Such cases have been categorized as “drug-induced homicide,” “murder by overdose,” “drug delivery resulting in death,” and “overdose homicide.” More than two dozen states now have laws allowing prosecutors to bring felony charges against anyone who provides drugs that prove fatal. States without specific legislation, such as Ohio, can indict a supplier under existing statutes: manslaughter, depraved heart, reckless homicide, murder. Potential punishments range from a year in prison to death. According to a recent study by the Northeastern University School of Law’s Health in Justice Action Lab, prosecutors in almost every state have exercised the overdose-homicide option.
Legal experts have traced these prosecutions to the fatal overdose of Len Bias, a superstar forward at the University of Maryland, who collapsed on June 19, 1986, in his dorm suite. Less than forty-eight hours earlier, he’d been drafted by the Boston Celtics.
Bias had taken high-quality cocaine, but politicians and the media nevertheless associated his death with the nation’s burgeoning crack epidemic. The Democrats were trying to retake the Senate, and wanted to prove that they could be tough on crime. House Speaker Tip O’Neill urged Congress to craft forceful antidrug legislation that candidates could cite in their reëlection campaigns. Eric Sterling, then the assistant counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, later recalled that lawmakers drafted the legislation without holding a single hearing, adding, “We did not consult with the Bureau of Prisons, or with the federal judiciary, or with D.E.A., or with the Justice Department.”
That October, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. It established mandatory minimum prison sentences for a range of narcotics crimes, including a “death resulting” offense involving the sharing or the sale of drugs. Sterling, now the director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, which focusses on failed drug policy, has noted that Congress assumed the legislation would lead law-enforcement officials to target “high-level traffickers.” But America’s prisons soon filled with low-level offenders; illicit drug use and trafficking continued unabated.


newyorker--2020-02-03--Vivian Gornick Is Rereading Everyone, Including Herself

When Gornick was thirteen , her father died , of a heart attack , and her childhood came to an abrupt end .
Bess took to the living-room sofa and refused to get up , moaning in agony at her abandonment .
This situation lasted for years .
Bess had idealized not only her husband but the idea of love , and without an object to receive it her adulation became hysterical .
“ Fierce Attachments ” is an unflinching book ; there is real repulsion in the way that Gornick writes of her mother ’ s abject wallowing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the commitment of the performance .
Bess , however , did one thing right by her child : she insisted that she pursue an education .
Gornick enrolled at City College , and her world bloomed .
Taking the subway from the Bronx to Manhattan every day was like going from Kansas to Oz .
At graduation , Bess was distressed to discover that her daughter had spent four years as an English major .
What were you supposed to do with a degree like that ?
She had thought Vivian was training @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gornick how she knew that literature was something worthy of study .
She looked at me as if I had asked how she knew that clean water was good to drink .
I felt ashamed .
Like her mother , I was thinking in terms of the market , and she in terms of the soul .
“ Because it was so thrilling .
Because it made me feel alive , ” she said .
“ And as if I was in the presence of exciting and absorbing realities .
The way people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ felt that there was a story beneath the surface of ordinary , everyday life .
And the books contain that story .
And , if I can get to it , life will be rich.
” The other reason that Gornick wanted to study literature was that she wanted to be a writer .
She had known desk ecstasy , the feeling of the world disappearing as you till your mind for the page , and once you experience that it ’ s hard to do anything else with your life .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ professionally took her a long time to figure out .
During the two and a half years of her first marriage , to a painter she met while she was in graduate school at Berkeley , she mostly banged her head against the wall .
The marriage didn ’ t fare any better .
Before the couple wed , they were young bohemians on the make , eating together at the kitchen table straight from the pot .
After , her husband expected her to have dinner ready for him every night , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Something similar happened to Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock , and we know how that story ended . )
Gornick went along with it—for a time .
His expectations were hers , too .
“ Love ( as we had been told since infancy ) was the territory upon which our particular battle with Life was to be pitched , ” she writes , of her indoctrination as a girl in the forties and fifties .
“ The promise of love alone gave us the courage to dream of leaving these caution-ridden precincts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toward genuine experience.
” So Gornick didn ’ t just want to give speeches after all .
Passion would be her ticket into the world .
Literature magnified this idea to a burning point .
As a young woman , Gornick loved D. H. Lawrence and Colette , those bards of the flesh .
She was in college when she encountered “ Sons and Lovers , ” the first book she examines in “ Unfinished Business , ” and instantly took it as a “ biblical text.
” She identified with Miriam , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Lawrence ’ s hero , a woman whose “ primary need is to know that she is desired , and for herself alone.
” On her second reading , she felt closer to Clara , Paul ’ s other lover , erotically knowledgeable and free , but still grasping .
When Gornick read the book for the third time , in her thirties , the women ’ s movement was in full swing , she had left her second husband , and she identified with Paul—who , not incidentally , also struggles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mother : “ preoccupied with desiring rather than being desired , I gloried in giving myself up to the shocking pleasure of sexual experience itself—rich , full , transporting—imagining myself now , like Paul at the end of the novel , the hero of my own life.
” This is definitive , triumphant .
But now , in her fourth time through , Gornick sees that Paul ’ s quest to free himself through passion only seems like liberation .
It ’ s a trap , just like the stultifying family life that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gornick on Gornick on Lawrence—is exciting .
She builds real heat .
She admires him for pushing , hard , against the bourgeois order that told him and everyone else to sit down and button up— “ like an abolitionist among antislavery liberals who say yes , slavery is terrible , but in time it will die out , be patient , while the abolitionist says fuck that , now or never , and goes to war.
” Sensual experience was Lawrence ’ s path to freedom and his metaphor for it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ observation is at the core of an earlier critical book of Gornick ’ s , “ The End of the Novel of Love , ” which was first published in 1997 and will be reissued next month .
Sex has been drained of its figurative power , Gornick argues , because people now know it for what it is .
It has been demystified , destigmatized , made mundane .
The stocking has been rolled all the way down , and now that we can see everything there ’ s nothing to see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” to Colette ’ s early novels , which captivated her as a young woman , Gornick finds her dated and narrow-minded , and when , in our conversation , I offhandedly called Colette a feminist—after all , hadn ’ t she made her way in the world by her pen , writing about women ’ s experience ?
—Gornick shut me down .
“ It ’ s all in service of erotic passion as the central experience of a life .
I can ’ t go with that , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Keira Knightley bio-pic from 2018 as much as I did . )
“ Why , I found myself saying to her , have you not made larger sense of things ?
” she writes of Colette , in “ Unfinished Business.
” “ Yes , I have from you the incomparable feel of an intelligent woman in the grip of romantic obsession , and that is strong stuff .
But today sexual passion alone is only a situation , not a metaphor ; as a story that begins and ends with itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same time , “ Unfinished Business , ” like all her memoirs , is a sexy book .
Erotic experience may no longer work for her in metaphorical terms , but it is very much at the center of the story of her own life .
In a chapter that touches on the novelist Elizabeth Bowen ’ s helpless , masochistic love for an indifferent man , Gornick tells us about Daniel , a man she met when she was eighteen and he was ten years older and “ to whom I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though he swiftly proved himself to be a cheat and a pathological liar .
Years later , he shows up at her door to ask what she got from the affair .
She leaves the question hanging .
At the time , she may not have known how to respond , but now she does : he gave her material , and it is she who will tell the tale .
Gornick ’ s second , connected critical revelation is that at the heart of great literature is the internal struggle that a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competing urges , undergoes to unify himself or herself—the fight against “ the perniciousness of the human self-divide , ” she calls it .
This is what she thinks makes great writers write , and it is what they write about .
Gornick ’ s ideal of the quest for the unified self is inherently psychoanalytic ; she sees writers attempting to reach on the page what many people spend years searching for in their therapist ’ s office .
Fortunately for therapists , most patients are never fully cured .
Fortunately for @ @ @ @ @ @

“Because it was so thrilling. Because it made me feel alive,” she said. “And as if I was in the presence of exciting and absorbing realities. The way people feel when they get religious. I felt that there was a story beneath the surface of ordinary, everyday life. And the books contain that story. And, if I can get to it, life will be rich.”
The other reason that Gornick wanted to study literature was that she wanted to be a writer. She had known desk ecstasy, the feeling of the world disappearing as you till your mind for the page, and once you experience that it’s hard to do anything else with your life. But how to go about being a writer professionally took her a long time to figure out. During the two and a half years of her first marriage, to a painter she met while she was in graduate school at Berkeley, she mostly banged her head against the wall. The marriage didn’t fare any better. Before the couple wed, they were young bohemians on the make, eating together at the kitchen table straight from the pot. After, her husband expected her to have dinner ready for him every night, like some starched suburban housewife. (Something similar happened to Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, and we know how that story ended.) Gornick went along with it—for a time. His expectations were hers, too. “Love (as we had been told since infancy) was the territory upon which our particular battle with Life was to be pitched,” she writes, of her indoctrination as a girl in the forties and fifties. “The promise of love alone gave us the courage to dream of leaving these caution-ridden precincts in order to turn our faces outward toward genuine experience.” So Gornick didn’t just want to give speeches after all. Passion would be her ticket into the world.
Literature magnified this idea to a burning point. As a young woman, Gornick loved D. H. Lawrence and Colette, those bards of the flesh. She was in college when she encountered “Sons and Lovers,” the first book she examines in “Unfinished Business,” and instantly took it as a “biblical text.” She identified with Miriam, the timid young lover of Paul Morel, Lawrence’s hero, a woman whose “primary need is to know that she is desired, and for herself alone.” On her second reading, she felt closer to Clara, Paul’s other lover, erotically knowledgeable and free, but still grasping. When Gornick read the book for the third time, in her thirties, the women’s movement was in full swing, she had left her second husband, and she identified with Paul—who, not incidentally, also struggles to break from a dissatisfied, suffocating mother: “preoccupied with desiring rather than being desired, I gloried in giving myself up to the shocking pleasure of sexual experience itself—rich, full, transporting—imagining myself now, like Paul at the end of the novel, the hero of my own life.”
This is definitive, triumphant. But now, in her fourth time through, Gornick sees that Paul’s quest to free himself through passion only seems like liberation. It’s a trap, just like the stultifying family life that preceded it. Reading Gornick on Lawrence—and Gornick on Gornick on Lawrence—is exciting. She builds real heat. She admires him for pushing, hard, against the bourgeois order that told him and everyone else to sit down and button up—“like an abolitionist among antislavery liberals who say yes, slavery is terrible, but in time it will die out, be patient, while the abolitionist says fuck that, now or never, and goes to war.” Sensual experience was Lawrence’s path to freedom and his metaphor for it. But, she goes on,
if Lawrence were alive today, this metaphor would not be available to him because today all have had long experience of the sexual freedom once denied, and have discovered firsthand that the making of a self from the inside out is not to be achieved through the senses alone. Not only does sexual ecstasy not deliver us to ourselves, one must have a self already in place to know what to do with it, should it come.
This observation is at the core of an earlier critical book of Gornick’s, “The End of the Novel of Love,” which was first published in 1997 and will be reissued next month. Sex has been drained of its figurative power, Gornick argues, because people now know it for what it is. It has been demystified, destigmatized, made mundane. The stocking has been rolled all the way down, and now that we can see everything there’s nothing to see. Returning, in “Unfinished Business,” to Colette’s early novels, which captivated her as a young woman, Gornick finds her dated and narrow-minded, and when, in our conversation, I offhandedly called Colette a feminist—after all, hadn’t she made her way in the world by her pen, writing about women’s experience?—Gornick shut me down. “It’s all in service of erotic passion as the central experience of a life. I can’t go with that,” she said. (Still, she liked the Keira Knightley bio-pic from 2018 as much as I did.) “Why, I found myself saying to her, have you not made larger sense of things?” she writes of Colette, in “Unfinished Business.” “Yes, I have from you the incomparable feel of an intelligent woman in the grip of romantic obsession, and that is strong stuff. But today sexual passion alone is only a situation, not a metaphor; as a story that begins and ends with itself, it no longer signifies.”
“Quick—tell us who you’re wearing!” Cartoon by Emily Bernstein Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
At the same time, “Unfinished Business,” like all her memoirs, is a sexy book. Erotic experience may no longer work for her in metaphorical terms, but it is very much at the center of the story of her own life. In a chapter that touches on the novelist Elizabeth Bowen’s helpless, masochistic love for an indifferent man, Gornick tells us about Daniel, a man she met when she was eighteen and he was ten years older and “to whom I remained in thrall for decades” even though he swiftly proved himself to be a cheat and a pathological liar. Years later, he shows up at her door to ask what she got from the affair. She leaves the question hanging. At the time, she may not have known how to respond, but now she does: he gave her material, and it is she who will tell the tale.
Gornick’s second, connected critical revelation is that at the heart of great literature is the internal struggle that a character, pulled in different directions by competing urges, undergoes to unify himself or herself—the fight against “the perniciousness of the human self-divide,” she calls it. This is what she thinks makes great writers write, and it is what they write about. Gornick’s ideal of the quest for the unified self is inherently psychoanalytic; she sees writers attempting to reach on the page what many people spend years searching for in their therapist’s office. Fortunately for therapists, most patients are never fully cured. Fortunately for readers, neither are writers.
Gornick has a tendency to rework her material, a fact that she mentioned sheepishly to me. (There is a slightly defensive note at the start of “Unfinished Business” alerting the reader to her habit.) A bit of drama at a long-ago dinner party; a story about a consequential love affair; a humiliating episode when her mother cut a patch off the front of her party dress, accusing her of heartlessness: all reappear in different books, with subtly different emphases. Sooner or later in the Gornick corpus, you will come across a favorite motto by Anton Chekhov: “Others made me a slave, but I must squeeze the slave out of myself, drop by drop.” That is what it means, to Gornick, to be an artist. To have a politics is to try to squeeze the slave out of others, too.
In the late sixties, after finishing graduate school, Gornick started writing for the Village Voice. The paper formed her in two big ways. The first was that it got her writing regularly. (Gornick has frequently suffered from writer’s block, and she has written beautifully about that agony.) “It was really like kindergarten. There was no constraint of any sort,” she told me. “It taught me the meaning of a point of view.” The second thing the Voice did was send Gornick to cover a women’s-lib gathering on Bleecker Street in 1970. She came back a convert to the cause. Suddenly, she had a framework to explain the whole world. The culture told men to take their brains seriously while dismissing women’s, and women had internalized this lesson to the point of losing track of its source. The rot was the system, and systems could be changed. “The exhilaration I experienced once I had the analysis! I woke up with it, danced through the day with it, fell asleep smiling with it,” she writes. “After all, what more did I need than the denial of women’s rights to explain me to myself? What a joyous little anarchist I then became!”
“Joyous” is the key word. If the substance of Gornick’s revelation was novel to her, its effect wasn’t. Radical socialism had been a religion in her parents’ house—a source of faith and celebration. Every Sunday, her uncles—“capitalists and Zionists,” she said—came over to ritually argue politics. (They owned the factory where her father worked.) Her parents never lit Shabbos candles, but they pulled Vivian from school to celebrate May Day. They were humble working people, and she saw how having a politics made them dignified and proud. More than proud—it gave them a sense of purpose in the world. It made them come alive to themselves.
In 1977, Gornick published a work of oral history called “The Romance of American Communism.” After years out of print, it is being reissued in April by Verso Books. “Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class,” the book begins. Gornick interviewed members of the American Communist Party, charting, through them, the organization’s rise, in the nineteen-tens, to its effective collapse, in 1956, after Nikita Khrushchev, speaking at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, acknowledged the nightmarish abuses of Stalin’s rule. At the heart of Gornick’s account is a single, penetrating thesis:
There’s a certain kind of cultural hero—the artist, the scientist, the thinker—who is often characterized as one who lives for “the work.” Family, friends, moral obligations be damned, the work comes first. The reason the work comes first in the case of the artist, the scientist, the thinker is that its practice makes flare into bright life a sense of inner expressiveness that is incomparable. . . . That conviction of centeredness irradiates the mind, heart, and spirit like nothing else. Many if not most of the Communists who felt destined for a life of serious radicalism experienced themselves in exactly the same way.
The American Communists, to Gornick, were heroic not because of their politics—that would sentimentalize them, and sentimentality is anathema to her—but because of their sense of absolute purpose and conviction that those politics gave them in a country hostile to their interests and indifferent to their lives. (That is also what dooms them, as her title implies: all romances must mature, or die.) She presents her interview subjects like characters in literature, as the protagonists of their own experience, and, for that reason, the book is not simply documentary but a work of literature, too, rich, moving, and contradictory.