newyorker--2020-04-27--Kent State and the War That Never Ended

Kent State and the War That Never Ended

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs met Dale Adams when they were in high school , in Ripley , Mississippi , a town best known as the home of William Faulkner ’ s great-grandfather , who ran a slave plantation , fought in the Mexican-American War , raised troops that joined the Confederate Army , wrote a best-selling mystery about a murder on a steamboat , shot a man to death and got away with it , and was elected to the Mississippi legislature .
He was killed before he could take his seat , but that seat would have been two hundred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Jackson , a city named for Andrew Jackson , who ran a slave plantation , fought in the War of 1812 , was famous for killing Indians , shot a man to death and got away with it , and was elected President of the United States .
Phillip Gibbs ’ s father and Dale Adams ’ s father had both been sharecroppers : they came from families who had been held as slaves by families like the Jacksons and the Faulkners , by force of arms .
In 1967 , after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ d take her out to the movies in a car that he borrowed from his uncle , a car with no key ; he had to jam a screwdriver into the ignition to start it up .
After Dale got pregnant , they were married , at his sister ’ s house .
They named the baby Phillip , Jr. ; Gibbs called him his little man .
Gibbs went to Jackson State , a historically black college , and majored in political science .
In 1970 , his junior year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to study law at Howard when he graduated .
He was opposed to the war in Vietnam , but he was also giving some thought to joining the Air Force , because that way , at least , he could provide his family with a decent apartment .
“ I really don ’ t want to go to the air force but I want you and my man to be staying with me , ” he wrote to Dale , after she and the baby had moved back home to Ripley to save @ @ @ @ @ @ @ divided by a four-lane road called Lynch Street , named for Mississippi ’ s first black congressman , John Roy Lynch , who was elected during Reconstruction , in 1872 , though a lot of people thought that the street honored another Lynch , the slaveholding judge whose name became a verb .
It was on Lynch Street , just after midnight , on May 15 , 1970 , that policemen in riot gear shot and killed Phillip Gibbs .
He was twenty-one .
In a barrage—they fired more than a hundred and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shot a seventeen-year-old high-school student named James Earl Green , who was walking down the street on his way home from work .
Buckshot and broken glass wounded a dozen more students , including women watching from the windows of their dormitory , Alexander Hall .
Phillip Gibbs ’ s sister lived in that dormitory .
That night , as the historian Nancy K. Bristow recounts in “ Steeped in the Blood of Racism : Black Power , Law and Order , and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College ” ( Oxford @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been out on Lynch Street protesting , and young men from the neighborhood had been throwing rocks and setting a truck on fire , partly because of something that had happened ten days before and more than nine hundred miles away : at Kent State University , the Ohio National Guard had shot and killed four students and wounded nine more .
They fired as many as sixty-seven shots in thirteen seconds .
“ Four dead in Ohio , ” Crosby , Stills , Nash & Young would sing , in a ballad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some more in Jackson , ” the Steve Miller Band sang , in 1970 , in the “ Jackson-Kent Blues.
” In the days between the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State , police in Augusta , Georgia , killed six unarmed black men , shot in the back , during riots triggered by the death of a teen-ager who had been tortured while in police custody .
At a march , on May 19th , protesters decorated coffins with signs : 2 Killed in Jackson , 4 Killed in Kent , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plus four , plus six , plus more .
In 1967 , near Jackson State , police killed a twenty-two-year-old civil-rights activist—shot him in the back and in the back of the head—after the Mississippi National Guard had been called in to quell student demonstrations over concerns that ranged from police brutality to the Vietnam War .
And , in 1968 , at South Carolina State , police fatally shot three students and wounded dozens more , in the first mass police shooting to take place on an American college campus .
Four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time for a new tally .
This spring marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Kent State shootings , an occasion explored in Derf Backderf ’ s deeply researched and gut-wrenching graphic nonfiction novel , “ Kent State : Four Dead in Ohio ” ( forthcoming from Abrams ComicArts ) .
Backderf was ten years old in 1970 , growing up outside Kent ; the book opens with him riding in the passenger seat of his mother ’ s car , reading Mad , and then watching Richard Nixon on television .
“ Kent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like a very clever college-newspaper comic strip—not unlike early “ Doonesbury , ” which débuted that same year—featuring the ordinary lives of four undergraduates , Allison Krause , Jeff Miller , Sandy Scheuer , and Bill Schroeder , their roommate problems , their love lives , their stressy phone calls with their parents , and their fury about the war .
As the violence intensifies , Backderf ’ s drawings grow darker and more cinematic : the intimate , moody panels of smart , young , good people , muddling through the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to black-backed panels of institutional buildings , with the people around them saying completely crazy things , then to explosive splash pages of soldiers , their guns locked and loaded , and , finally , to a two-page spread of those fateful thirteen seconds : “ BOOM !
” “ BANG !
” “ BANG !
BANG !
POW !
” Backderf ’ s publisher has billed his book as telling “ the untold story of the Kent State shootings , ” but the terrible story of what happened at Kent State on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told many times before , including by an extraordinary fleet of reporters and writers who turned up on campus while the blood was still wet on the pavement .
Joe Eszterhas and Michael Roberts , staff writers for the Cleveland Plain Dealer , both of whom had reported from Vietnam , reached campus within forty-five minutes of the first shot—they rushed in to cover the growing campus unrest—and stayed for three months to report “ Thirteen Seconds : Confrontation at Kent State , ” their swiftly published book .
Eszterhas went on to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a twenty-eight-year-old Chicago Tribune reporter who later won a Pulitzer Prize and wrote a best-selling memoir about his service in Vietnam , was driving to Kent State , from the Cleveland airport , when the news about the shots came over the radio .
“ I remember stepping on the gas , ” he writes , in the introduction to “ 13 Seconds : A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings , ” a series of reflections on his earlier reporting .
“ I entered the picture late , ” the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I arrived by car in early August.
” He stayed for months .
The Reader ’ s Digest had hired him to write “ Kent State : What Happened and Why , ” providing him with reams of research from on-the-spot reporters .
The political commentator I. F. Stone cranked out a short book—really , a long essay—titled “ The Killings at Kent State : How Murder Went Unpunished.
” So many books were published about the shooting , so fast , that when NBC ’ s “ Today ” show featured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ match .
Before introducing them , the host , Hugh Downs , gave a grave , concise , newsman ’ s account of the sequence of events :

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs met Dale Adams when they were in high school, in Ripley, Mississippi, a town best known as the home of William Faulkner’s great-grandfather, who ran a slave plantation, fought in the Mexican-American War, raised troops that joined the Confederate Army, wrote a best-selling mystery about a murder on a steamboat, shot a man to death and got away with it, and was elected to the Mississippi legislature. He was killed before he could take his seat, but that seat would have been two hundred miles away in the state capitol, in Jackson, a city named for Andrew Jackson, who ran a slave plantation, fought in the War of 1812, was famous for killing Indians, shot a man to death and got away with it, and was elected President of the United States. Phillip Gibbs’s father and Dale Adams’s father had both been sharecroppers: they came from families who had been held as slaves by families like the Jacksons and the Faulkners, by force of arms.
In 1967, after Gibbs and Adams started dating, he’d take her out to the movies in a car that he borrowed from his uncle, a car with no key; he had to jam a screwdriver into the ignition to start it up. After Dale got pregnant, they were married, at his sister’s house. They named the baby Phillip, Jr.; Gibbs called him his little man. Gibbs went to Jackson State, a historically black college, and majored in political science. In 1970, his junior year, Gibbs decided that he’d like to study law at Howard when he graduated. He was opposed to the war in Vietnam, but he was also giving some thought to joining the Air Force, because that way, at least, he could provide his family with a decent apartment. “I really don’t want to go to the air force but I want you and my man to be staying with me,” he wrote to Dale, after she and the baby had moved back home to Ripley to save money.
The Jackson State campus was divided by a four-lane road called Lynch Street, named for Mississippi’s first black congressman, John Roy Lynch, who was elected during Reconstruction, in 1872, though a lot of people thought that the street honored another Lynch, the slaveholding judge whose name became a verb. It was on Lynch Street, just after midnight, on May 15, 1970, that policemen in riot gear shot and killed Phillip Gibbs. He was twenty-one. In a barrage—they fired more than a hundred and fifty rounds in twenty-eight seconds—they also fatally shot a seventeen-year-old high-school student named James Earl Green, who was walking down the street on his way home from work. Buckshot and broken glass wounded a dozen more students, including women watching from the windows of their dormitory, Alexander Hall. Phillip Gibbs’s sister lived in that dormitory.
That night, as the historian Nancy K. Bristow recounts in “Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College” (Oxford), students at Jackson State had been out on Lynch Street protesting, and young men from the neighborhood had been throwing rocks and setting a truck on fire, partly because of something that had happened ten days before and more than nine hundred miles away: at Kent State University, the Ohio National Guard had shot and killed four students and wounded nine more. They fired as many as sixty-seven shots in thirteen seconds. “Four dead in Ohio,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young would sing, in a ballad that became an anthem. “Shot some more in Jackson,” the Steve Miller Band sang, in 1970, in the “Jackson-Kent Blues.” In the days between the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State, police in Augusta, Georgia, killed six unarmed black men, shot in the back, during riots triggered by the death of a teen-ager who had been tortured while in police custody. At a march, on May 19th, protesters decorated coffins with signs: 2 Killed in Jackson, 4 Killed in Kent, 6 Killed in Augusta.
Two, plus four, plus six, plus more. In 1967, near Jackson State, police killed a twenty-two-year-old civil-rights activist—shot him in the back and in the back of the head—after the Mississippi National Guard had been called in to quell student demonstrations over concerns that ranged from police brutality to the Vietnam War. And, in 1968, at South Carolina State, police fatally shot three students and wounded dozens more, in the first mass police shooting to take place on an American college campus. Four dead in Ohio? It’s time for a new tally.
This spring marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Kent State shootings, an occasion explored in Derf Backderf’s deeply researched and gut-wrenching graphic nonfiction novel, “Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio” (forthcoming from Abrams ComicArts). Backderf was ten years old in 1970, growing up outside Kent; the book opens with him riding in the passenger seat of his mother’s car, reading Mad, and then watching Richard Nixon on television. “Kent State” reads, in the beginning, like a very clever college-newspaper comic strip—not unlike early “Doonesbury,” which débuted that same year—featuring the ordinary lives of four undergraduates, Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandy Scheuer, and Bill Schroeder, their roommate problems, their love lives, their stressy phone calls with their parents, and their fury about the war. As the violence intensifies, Backderf’s drawings grow darker and more cinematic: the intimate, moody panels of smart, young, good people, muddling through the inanity and ferocity of American politics yield to black-backed panels of institutional buildings, with the people around them saying completely crazy things, then to explosive splash pages of soldiers, their guns locked and loaded, and, finally, to a two-page spread of those fateful thirteen seconds: “BOOM!” “BANG!” “BANG! BANG! POW!”
Backderf’s publisher has billed his book as telling “the untold story of the Kent State shootings,” but the terrible story of what happened at Kent State on May 4, 1970, has been told many times before, including by an extraordinary fleet of reporters and writers who turned up on campus while the blood was still wet on the pavement. Joe Eszterhas and Michael Roberts, staff writers for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, both of whom had reported on Vietnam, reached campus within forty-five minutes of the first shot—they rushed in to cover the growing campus unrest—and stayed for three months to report “Thirteen Seconds: Confrontation at Kent State,” their swiftly published book. Eszterhas went on to become a prominent screenwriter. Philip Caputo, a twenty-eight-year-old Chicago Tribune reporter who later won a Pulitzer Prize and wrote a best-selling memoir about his service in Vietnam, was driving to Kent State, from the Cleveland airport, when the news about the shots came over the radio. “I remember stepping on the gas,” he writes, in the introduction to “13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings,” a series of reflections on his earlier reporting. “I entered the picture late,” the best-selling novelist James A. Michener wrote. “I arrived by car in early August.” He stayed for months. The Reader’s Digest had hired him to write “Kent State: What Happened and Why,” providing him with reams of research from on-the-spot reporters. The political commentator I. F. Stone cranked out a short book—really, a long essay—titled “The Killings at Kent State: How Murder Went Unpunished.” So many books were published about the shooting, so fast, that when NBC’s “Today” show featured their authors the result was a screaming match. Before introducing them, the host, Hugh Downs, gave a grave, concise, newsman’s account of the sequence of events:
On Thursday, April 30th, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced that American forces were moving into Cambodia. On Friday, May 1st, students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, expressed their displeasure at the President’s announcement. That night, there was violence in the streets of Kent. On Saturday, May 2nd, the R.O.T.C. building was burned, National Guardsmen moved onto the campus. On Sunday, May 3rd, students and Guardsmen traded insults, rocks, and tear gas. On Monday, May 4th, the confrontations continued. There was marching and counter-marching. Students hurled rocks and Guardsmen chased students, firing tear gas. The Guardsmen pursued the students up an area called Blanket Hill. Some Guardsmen pointed their rifles menacingly. And suddenly, it happened.
Nearly all accounts of what happened at Kent State begin the way the “Today” show did, on April 30, 1970, when, in a televised address, Nixon announced that the United States had sent troops into Cambodia, even though, only ten days earlier, he had announced the withdrawal of a hundred and fifty thousand troops from Vietnam. Students on college campuses had been protesting the war since 1965, beginning with teach-ins at the University of Michigan. By 1970, it had seemed as though U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam was finally winding down; now, with the news of the invasion of Cambodia, it was winding back up. Nixon, who had campaigned on a promise to restore law and order, warned Americans to brace for protest. “My fellow Americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home,” he said. “Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed.”
“I was not huffing and puffing—it’s just allergies.” Cartoon by Elisabeth McNair Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Nixon’s Cambodia speech led to antiwar protests at hundreds of colleges across the country. Campus leaders called for a National Student Strike. Borrowing from the Black Power movement, they used a black fist as its symbol. The number of campuses involved grew by twenty a day. Most demonstrations were peaceful, but others were violent, even terrifying. In some places, including Kent, students rioted, smashing shop windows, pelting cars, setting fires, and throwing firebombs. In Ohio, the mayor of Kent asked the governor to send in the National Guard.
Nixon hated the student protesters as much in private as he did in public. “You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses,” he said the day after the Cambodia speech. He had long urged a hard line on student protesters: antiwar protesters, civil-rights activists, all of them. So had Ronald Reagan, who ran for governor of California in 1966 on a promise to bring law and order to Berkeley, a campus he described as “a rallying point for communists and a center for sexual misconduct.” In 1969, he ordered the California Highway Patrol to clear out a vacant lot near the Berkeley campus which student and local volunteers had turned into a park. Police fired shots, killing one onlooker, and injuring dozens of people. Reagan called in the National Guard. Weeks before Nixon’s Cambodia speech stirred up still more protest, Reagan, running for reëlection, said that he was ready for a fight. “If it takes a bloodbath,” he said, “let’s get it over with.”
May 4, 1970, the day of that bloodbath, fell on a Monday. The Guardsmen at Kent State started firing not long after noon, while students were crossing campus; there seems to be some chance that they mistook the students spilling out of buildings for an act of aggression, when, actually, they were leaving classes. Bill Schroeder, a sophomore, was an R.O.T.C. student. “He didn’t like Vietnam and Cambodia but if he had to go to Vietnam,” his roommate said later, “he would have gone.” Schroeder was walking to class when he was shot in the back. Jeff Miller, a junior from Plainview, Long Island, hated the war, and went out to join the protest; he was shot in the mouth. Sandy Scheuer had been training to become a speech therapist. Shot in the neck, she bled to death. Allison Krause, a freshman honor student from outside Pittsburgh, was about to transfer. She’d refused to join groups like Students for a Democratic Society, which, by 1969, had become increasingly violent. (Her father told a reporter that she had called them “a bunch of finks.”) But she became outraged when the National Guard occupied the campus. On a final exam, she had tried to answer the question “What is the point of history?” “Dates and facts are not enough to show what happened in the past,” she wrote. “It is necessary to analyze and delve into the human side of history to come up with the truth.” She had lost her naïveté, she told her professor, in a reflection that she wrote at the end of the exam: “I don’t take the books as ‘the law’ anymore.” Her professor wrote back, “A happy thing—that.” She had gone out to protest the invasion of Cambodia.


newyorker--2020-04-27--Can We Track COVID-19 and Protect Privacy at the Same Time?

Caroline Buckee , a top epidemiologist at Harvard ’ s T. H. Chan School of Public Health , has devoted her professional life to studying malaria and other infectious diseases .
As news of a novel coronavirus emerged from China , Buckee realized that her area of expertise—how infectious diseases evolve as they move through vulnerable populations—would be valuable to health-care workers and elected officials as the virus spread across the globe .
“ The methods and the tools are the same , and epidemiological models are easily adapted , ” Buckee told me .
“ But , for many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work with endemic pathogens .
COVID-19 is new .
There is so much we don ’ t know.
” Since the most urgent imperative was to “ flatten the curve ” of infections , it was crucial to know where public-health strategies like stay-at-home orders were working and where they were not .
Buckee quickly assembled a consortium of infectious-disease researchers to make the data accessible to policymakers—data that they did not yet have .
At just about the same time , Ian Allen , a former Marine and C.I.A .
paramilitary officer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Public Health and asked if there was anything that his new company , Camber Systems , could do to help with the pandemic .
Soon afterward , Allen was connected with Buckee , the associate director of the School of Public Health ’ s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics .
Buckee had created the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network , a network of epidemiologists from universities around the world , to try to track the efficacy of social-distancing measures .
Allen agreed to provide Buckee with the software to query and scrub data collected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ track the coronavirus ’ s spread without violating Americans ’ privacy .
“ I wasn ’ t really expecting ever to hear back , assuming that Harvard , of all places , would have all the resources they ’ d ever need , ” Allen told me , while standing in a field in rural Virginia as his son shot at tin cans with a BB gun .
( Like many parents , Allen has been homeschooling his children during the pandemic ; this was geometry class . )
“ Caroline asked me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Just aggregating the data and anonymizing it in the right way to protect privacy would take some of the burden off of her.
” Allen reached out to a handful of data firms , including Unacast , Kochava , and X-Mode .
All agreed to provide their data for free .
Camber Systems , of which Allen is the C.E.O.
, is a year-old startup that , among other things , hopes to offer federal , state , and local government agencies ways to use commercially harvested location data to improve their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before the pandemic , Allen and his business partner , Navin Vembar , a mathematician who served as the chief technology officer of the General Services Administration , were searching for potential clients , talking with officials in Madison , Wisconsin , about using location data to shore up tourism and distribute the city ’ s public resources equitably .
Assisting Buckee ’ s COVID-19 Mobility Data Network was the kind of project they envisioned when they launched their company with Hangar , a venture-capital firm that funds companies that use technology in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ location data in an accessible and searchable format for epidemiologists studying COVID-19 , the project would enable researchers and policymakers to see how members of the public move around their communities .
When paired with other metrics , such as the number of new infections or mortality rates , the data would guide policymakers as they grappled with when and where to lift stay-at-home orders .
Facebook is also supplying the network with data .
According to Buckee , correspondence between the various groups gives researchers confidence in the trends they are seeing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to show what ’ s going on , ” she said .
Location data are the bread and butter of “ ad tech.
” They let marketers know you recently shopped for running shoes , are trying to lose weight , and have an abiding affection for kettle corn .
Apps on cell phones emit a constant trail of longitude and latitude readings , making it possible to follow consumers through time and space .
Location data are often triangulated with other , seemingly innocuous slivers of personal information—so many , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brokers claim to have around five thousand data points on almost every American .
It ’ s a lucrative business—by at least one estimate , the data-brokerage industry is worth two hundred billion dollars .
Though the data are often anonymized , a number of studies have shown that they can be easily unmasked to reveal identities—names , addresses , phone numbers , and any number of intimacies .
As Buckee knew , public-health surveillance , which serves the community at large , has always bumped up against privacy , which protects the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , public-health surveillance was typically conducted by contract tracing , with health-care workers privately interviewing individuals to determine their health status and trace their movements .
It was labor-intensive , painstaking , memory-dependent work , and , because of that , it was inherently limited in scope and often incomplete or inefficient .
( At the start of the pandemic , there were only twenty-two hundred contact tracers in the country . )
Digital technologies , which work at scale , instantly provide detailed information culled from security cameras , license-plate readers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ devices , cell-phone towers , Internet searches , and commercial transactions .
They can be useful for public-health surveillance in the same way that they facilitate all kinds of spying by governments , businesses , and malign actors .
South Korea , which reported its first COVID-19 case a month after the United States , has achieved dramatically lower rates of infection and mortality by tracking citizens with the virus via their phones , car G.P.S .
systems , credit-card transactions , and public cameras , in addition to a robust disease-testing program @ @ @ @ @ @ @ secret police , to repurpose its terrorist-tracking protocols .
China programmed government-installed cameras to point at infected people ’ s doorways to monitor their movements .
As unlikely as it may seem that such privacy-compromising measures will be adopted in the United States , the Trump Administration reportedly summoned tech executives to the White House to discuss sharing data with the government .
Not much is known about the meeting .
The Administration has classified all its discussions about COVID-19 , and it later denounced Politico for reporting that the White House was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a national coronavirus surveillance system .
Last week , Gizmodo reported that Palantir , a secretive data-analytics firm owned by the conservative billionaire and the Trump backer Peter Thiel , has a contract from the Trump Administration to build a database to track the spread of the virus .
Palantir is best known for its work with the N.S.A .
and ICE , where its software is used to track undocumented immigrants .
( Other private surveillance companies , most notably the Israeli firm NSO , are also pitching COVID-19 tracing to governments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re all too familiar with the historical record of crises , where new powers in the hands of governments and corporations lead to them holding on to them indefinitely , ” Adam Schwartz , a lawyer with the digital-rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation , told me .
Schwartz pointed out that most of the sweeping investigative powers given to the intelligence community after the 9/11 terrorist attack are still in place nearly two decades later .
As Senator Maria Cantwell wrote , on April 9th , in her opening remarks for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Commerce , Science , and Transportation on the role of Big Tech during the pandemic , “ Rights and data surrendered temporarily during an emergency can become very difficult to get back.
” As difficult as it is now to look ahead , lawmakers like Cantwell and privacy advocates like Schwartz are asking us to think about how much privacy we are willing to sacrifice to combat a rampaging virus .
If we accept government data tracking , the surveillance necessary to curtail COVID-19 could become a permanent fixture in our lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ In this particular case , if we have technology for minimizing harm , we have a moral obligation to use it , ” Marcello Ienca , a bioethicist at the Swiss university ETH Zurich , told me .
“ But we have to merge it with the best available technology in the areas of cybersecurity and privacy.
” To do this right , Ienca added , the public-health experts need to work with privacy advocates .

Caroline Buckee, a top epidemiologist at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health, has devoted her professional life to studying malaria and other infectious diseases. As news of a novel coronavirus emerged from China, Buckee realized that her area of expertise—how infectious diseases evolve as they move through vulnerable populations—would be valuable to health-care workers and elected officials as the virus spread across the globe. “The methods and the tools are the same, and epidemiological models are easily adapted,” Buckee told me. “But, for many of us, like me, we work with endemic pathogens. COVID-19 is new. There is so much we don’t know.” Since the most urgent imperative was to “flatten the curve” of infections, it was crucial to know where public-health strategies like stay-at-home orders were working and where they were not. Buckee quickly assembled a consortium of infectious-disease researchers to make the data accessible to policymakers—data that they did not yet have.
At just about the same time, Ian Allen, a former marine and C.I.A. paramilitary officer, cold-called Harvard’s School of Public Health and asked if there was anything that his new company, Camber Systems, could do to help with the pandemic. Soon afterward, Allen was connected with Buckee, the associate director of the School of Public Health’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. Buckee had created the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network, a network of epidemiologists from universities around the world, to try to track the efficacy of social-distancing measures. Allen agreed to provide Buckee with the software to query and scrub data collected by tech companies and use it to track the coronavirus’s spread without violating Americans’ privacy. “I wasn’t really expecting ever to hear back, assuming that Harvard, of all places, would have all the resources they’d ever need,” Allen told me, while standing in a field in rural Virginia as his son shot at tin cans with a BB gun. (Like many parents, Allen has been homeschooling his children during the pandemic; this was geometry class.) “Caroline asked me if we could help aggregate location data. Just aggregating the data and anonymizing it in the right way to protect privacy would take some of the burden off of her.” Allen reached out to a handful of data firms, including Unacast, Kochava, and X-Mode. All agreed to provide their data for free.
Camber Systems, of which Allen is the C.E.O., is a year-old startup that, among other things, hopes to offer federal, state, and local government agencies ways to use commercially harvested location data to improve their operations without violating privacy laws. Shortly before the pandemic, Allen and his business partner, Navin Vembar, a mathematician who served as the chief technology officer of the General Services Administration, were searching for potential clients, talking with officials in Madison, Wisconsin, about using location data to shore up tourism and distribute the city’s public resources equitably. Assisting Buckee’s COVID-19 Mobility Data Network was the kind of project they envisioned when they launched their company with Hangar, a venture-capital firm that funds companies that use technology in the public interest.
By presenting aggregated location data in an accessible and searchable format for epidemiologists studying COVID-19, the project would enable researchers and policymakers to see how members of the public move around their communities. When paired with other metrics, such as the number of new infections or mortality rates, the data would guide policymakers as they grappled with when and where to lift stay-at-home orders. Facebook is also supplying the network with data. According to Buckee, correspondence between the various groups gives researchers confidence in the trends they are seeing. “One data set is not going to show what’s going on,” she said.
Location data are the bread and butter of “ad tech.” They let marketers know you recently shopped for running shoes, are trying to lose weight, and have an abiding affection for kettle corn. Apps on cell phones emit a constant trail of longitude and latitude readings, making it possible to follow consumers through time and space. Location data are often triangulated with other, seemingly innocuous slivers of personal information—so many, in fact, that a number of data brokers claim to have around five thousand data points on almost every American. It’s a lucrative business—by at least one estimate, the data-brokerage industry is worth two hundred billion dollars. Though the data are often anonymized, a number of studies have shown that they can be easily unmasked to reveal identities—names, addresses, phone numbers, and any number of intimacies. As Buckee knew, public-health surveillance, which serves the community at large, has always bumped up against privacy, which protects the individual. But, in the past, public-health surveillance was typically conducted by contract tracing, with health-care workers privately interviewing individuals to determine their health status and trace their movements. It was labor-intensive, painstaking, memory-dependent work, and, because of that, it was inherently limited in scope and often incomplete or inefficient. (At the start of the pandemic, there were only twenty-two hundred contact tracers in the country.)
Digital technologies, which work at scale, instantly provide detailed information culled from security cameras, license-plate readers, biometric scans, drones, G.P.S. devices, cell-phone towers, Internet searches, and commercial transactions. They can be useful for public-health surveillance in the same way that they facilitate all kinds of spying by governments, businesses, and malign actors. South Korea, which reported its first COVID-19 case a month after the United States, has achieved dramatically lower rates of infection and mortality by tracking citizens with the virus via their phones, car G.P.S. systems, credit-card transactions, and public cameras, in addition to a robust disease-testing program. Israel enlisted Shin Bet, its secret police, to repurpose its terrorist-tracking protocols. China programmed government-installed cameras to point at infected people’s doorways to monitor their movements.
As unlikely as it may seem that such privacy-compromising measures will be adopted in the United States, the Trump Administration reportedly summoned tech executives to the White House to discuss sharing data with the government. Not much is known about the meeting. The Administration has classified all its discussions about COVID-19, and it later denounced Politico for reporting that the White House was in talks with tech firms to create a national coronavirus surveillance system. Last week, Gizmodo reported that Palantir, a secretive data-analytics firm owned by the conservative billionaire and the Trump backer Peter Thiel, has a contract from the Trump Administration to build a database to track the spread of the virus. Palantir is best known for its work with the N.S.A. and ICE, where its software is used to track undocumented immigrants. (Other private surveillance companies, most notably the Israeli firm NSO, are also pitching COVID-19 tracing to governments around the world.)
“We’re all too familiar with the historical record of crises, where new powers in the hands of governments and corporations lead to them holding on to them indefinitely,” Adam Schwartz, a lawyer with the digital-rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me. Schwartz pointed out that most of the sweeping investigative powers given to the intelligence community after the 9/11 terrorist attack are still in place nearly two decades later. As Senator Maria Cantwell wrote, on April 9th, in her opening remarks for a paper hearing by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on the role of Big Tech during the pandemic, “Rights and data surrendered temporarily during an emergency can become very difficult to get back.”
As difficult as it is now to look ahead, lawmakers like Cantwell and privacy advocates like Schwartz are asking us to think about how much privacy we are willing to sacrifice to combat a rampaging virus. If we accept government data tracking, the surveillance necessary to curtail COVID-19 could become a permanent fixture in our lives. It’s an unknowable trade-off. “In this particular case, if we have technology for minimizing harm, we have a moral obligation to use it,” Marcello Ienca, a bioethicist at the Swiss university ETH Zurich, told me. “But we have to merge it with the best available technology in the areas of cybersecurity and privacy.” To do this right, Ienca added, the public-health experts need to work with privacy advocates.


newyorker--2020-04-27--“The End of Poetry,” by Ada Limón

“The End of Poetry,” by Ada Limón

Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower and snowshoes , maple and seeds , samara and shoot , enough chiaroscuro , enough of thus and prophecy and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis of thee , enough of bosom and bud , skin and god not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds , enough of the will to go on and not go on or how a certain light does a certain thing , enough of the kneeling and the rising and the looking inward and the looking up , enough of the gun , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s suicide , the long-lost letter on the dresser , enough of the longing and the ego and the obliteration of ego , enough of the mother and the child and the father and the child and enough of the pointing to the world , weary and desperate , enough of the brutal and the border , enough of can you see me , can you hear me , enough I am human , enough I am alone and I am desperate , enough of the animal saving me , enough of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the air and its ease , I am asking you to touch me .

Audio: Read by the author.
Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower
and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,
enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy
and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis
of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god
not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,
enough of the will to go on and not go on or how
a certain light does a certain thing, enough
of the kneeling and the rising and the looking
inward and the looking up, enough of the gun,
the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost
letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and
the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough
of the mother and the child and the father and the child
and enough of the pointing to the world, weary
and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border,
enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough
I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,
enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high
water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,
I am asking you to touch me.


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Each week , we provide a cartoon in need of a caption .
You , the reader , submit your @ @ @ @ @ three finalists , and you vote for your favorite .
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Soﬁa Warren Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop


newyorker--2020-04-28--What to Stream: Forty-Six Films from OVID.tv, Crackle, and IFC Films Unlimited

Read Richard Brody ’ s lists of the best films on Hulu , Amazon Prime , and Netflix , and of twenty-three short films to stream .
With time to dive into the offerings of major streaming services and come up with treasures , I ’ ve also noticed that there are some significant omissions—notably in the realms of independent films , recent international films , documentaries , and even modern Hollywood .
A trio of less prominent but generously programmed sites—OVID.tv , Crackle , and the newly launched IFC Films Unlimited—helps to fill in the gaps .
Founded in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eight of the most discerning distributors .
Crackle , run by Sony and featuring some of its films along with those of its predecessor , Columbia Pictures ( which Sony took over in 1989 ) , feels like a throwback to basic cable , both in its offerings and its functioning : it ’ s free but features commercial interruptions , about ten of them per movie .
As for IFC Films Unlimited , it ’ s got a significant batch of independent and international films from the past twenty years .
Here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( The link on each title is to my review from The New Yorker . )
Patricio Guzmán ’ s heroic three-part documentary about the coup that forced Chile ’ s democratically elected president , Salvador Allende , out of power , in 1973 , and replaced him with the sanguinary dictator Augusto Pinochet .
It began filming even before the coup took place , and his reporting has a tragic , horrific immediacy .
Marie Losier ’ s documentary about the great wrestler in the Mexican lucha libre scene ( whom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in 2014 ) , a gay man who resisted and overcame hostility in the sport and in his family , is also an intimate first-person account of the physical toll of his athletic and theatrical artistry and the emotional toll of his struggle for acceptance .
The release , in 2019 , of two new documentaries by the Belgian-based , Cameroonian-born filmmaker Rosine Mbakam constituted one of the year ’ s major discoveries .
This one is set in a Brussels hair salon , owned and operated by an African woman who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the city ’ s African residents .
( Mbakam ’ s other film , “ The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman , ” is one of the great recent personal documentaries , in which Mbakam returns to her native Cameroon , in the company of her husband and young son , and , in discussions with her mother and other relatives , unfolds her own cultural , familial , and political heritage . )
Bill Morrison ’ s thrilling documentary is centered on the discovery of hundreds of reels of film @ @ @ @ @ @ @ literally buried in a Yukon town—and the conjoined history of movies and of the town that the discovery brings to light .
“ Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun ?
” Travis Wilkerson ’ s tense and impassioned exploration of a crime that his great-grandfather , a white man , committed in his home town , in rural Alabama , in 1946—in which he shot a black man to death and went unpunished—reveals intimate details of the history of Jim Crow and of resistance to it , as well as its enduring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This 1967 compilation of films relating to the Vietnam War , by many of the best directors working in France in the late nineteen-sixties , including Agnès Varda , Jean-Luc Godard , Alain Resnais , and William Klein—brought together by Chris Marker—offers a wide range of visions for political cinema .
The director Wang Bing ’ s extended and clandestine interview with He Fengming—who recounts the horrific exactions that she and her late husband endured , in the late nineteen-fifties , in China ’ s so-called Anti-Rightist Movement , and then , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to life cruel repressions and offers a shocking reminder that the regime that perpetrated them is still in power , suppressing the evidence .
( The site also offers his even-more-extensive documentary “ Dead Souls , ” in which many more victims discuss their experiences and help the filmmaker find physical traces of them in the landscape . )
Working with his lead actress Pascale Ogier , one of the real-life tragic heroines of modern French cinema , Éric Rohmer develops , in this 1984 drama , a story of youthful passion and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to his filmography and exemplary of both his lifelong themes and the times .
Philippe Garrel ’ s drama , from 2016 , maps a filmmaking couple ’ s romantic crises onto political and historical conflicts , and does so with a self-aware and self-excoriating irony .
“ Marcel Ophüls and Jean-Luc Godard : The Meeting in St.-Gervais ” The trend of in-depth interviews with filmmakers , begun in France in the nineteen-fifties , found its king in Jean-Luc Godard , whose sixty-year history of philosophical and rhetorical improvisation ( as seen in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is an art form in itself .
His 2009 discussion with his near-contemporary Marcel Ophüls ( which was also published in book form ) is centered on the failed effort of the filmmakers to collaborate on a movie , about Judaism—a project that nonetheless made its mark on Godard ’ s subsequent work .
It took a trio of directors ( including Samuel Theis , one of the sons of the protagonist ) to make this vital and vigorous docu-fiction , from 2014 , centered on Angélique Litzenburger , portraying herself , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ border to Germany to work as the hostess at a strip club and whose personal life grows increasingly intertwined with her job .
Jean Rouch may be the most important little-known filmmaker in the history of cinema ; his combination of documentary and fiction , his virtual invention of metafiction and first-person documentary , has proved startlingly influential , and many of his major films are available on the site , including “ The Human Pyramid , ” from 1961 , and this confrontational and analytical fiction , from 1962—featuring several of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a story about a young woman , a high-school student in Paris , who conducts a personal social-science experiment into men ’ s private lives and probes the city ’ s unchallenged ambience of public sexual aggression .
This 1968 documentary , the journalist Peter Lennon ’ s only film , is a loving yet bitter vision of the political and religious oppression that prevailed in Ireland at the time and that threatened the nation ’ s rich artistic and cultural heritage .
As evidence of its power , the film was banned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Duane ’ s terrific supplement , “ The Making of ‘ Rocky Road to Dublin , ’ ” is also streaming on the site . )
This documentary , by David Zeiger , movingly details protest against the Vietnam War from within the military itself , blending archival material with the accounts of veterans in recent years .
Raúl Ruiz ’ s daringly stylized adaptation of Marcel Proust ’ s seven-volume novel ( centered on the final book ) , starring Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich , displays an imaginative and technical flair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ memory and reconnects with silent-era movies in the domain of fantasy .

Read Richard Brody’s lists of the best films on Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Netflix, and of twenty-three short films to stream.
With time to dive into the offerings of major streaming services and come up with treasures, I’ve also noticed that there are some significant omissions—notably in the realms of independent films, recent international films, documentaries, and even modern Hollywood. A trio of less prominent but generously programmed sites—OVID.tv, Crackle, and the newly launched IFC Films Unlimited—helps to fill in the gaps. Founded in 2019, OVID.tv is a consortium of eight of the most discerning distributors. Crackle, featuring films from Sony along with those of its predecessor, Columbia Pictures (which Sony took over in 1989), feels like a throwback to basic cable, both in its offerings and its functioning: it’s free but features commercial interruptions, about ten of them per movie. As for IFC Films Unlimited, it’s got a significant batch of independent and international films from the past twenty years. Here are some highlights from each of them. (The link on each title is to my review from The New Yorker.)
OVID.tv
“The Battle of Chile”
Patricio Guzmán’s heroic three-part documentary about the coup that forced Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, out of power, in 1973, and replaced him with the sanguinary dictator Augusto Pinochet. It began filming even before the coup took place, and his reporting has a tragic, horrific immediacy.
“Cassandro, the Exotico!”
Marie Losier’s documentary about the great wrestler in the Mexican lucha libre scene (whom William Finnegan profiled in The New Yorker, in 2014), a gay man who resisted and overcame hostility in the sport and in his family, is also an intimate first-person account of the physical toll of his athletic and theatrical artistry and the emotional toll of his struggle for acceptance.
“Chez Jolie Coiffure”
The release, in 2019, of two new documentaries by the Belgian-based, Cameroonian-born filmmaker Rosine Mbakam constituted one of the year’s major discoveries. This one is set in a Brussels hair salon, owned and operated by an African woman who turns the shop into a community center for the city’s African residents. (Mbakam’s other film, “The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman,” is one of the great recent personal documentaries, in which Mbakam returns to her native Cameroon, in the company of her husband and young son, and, in discussions with her mother and other relatives, unfolds her own cultural, familial, and political heritage.)
“Dawson City: Frozen Time”
Bill Morrison’s thrilling documentary is centered on the discovery of hundreds of reels of film from the nineteen-teens and twenties that were literally buried in a Yukon town—and the conjoined history of movies and of the town that the discovery brings to light.
“Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?”
Travis Wilkerson’s tense and impassioned exploration of a crime that his great-grandfather, a white man, committed in his home town, in rural Alabama, in 1946—in which he shot a black man to death and went unpunished—reveals intimate details of the history of Jim Crow and of resistance to it, as well as its enduring effect on the region to this day.
“Far from Vietnam”
This 1967 compilation of films relating to the Vietnam War, by many of the best directors working in France in the late nineteen-sixties, including Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, and William Klein—brought together by Chris Marker—offers a wide range of visions for political cinema.
“Fengming: A Chinese Memoir”
The director Wang Bing’s extended and clandestine interview with He Fengming—who recounts the horrific exactions that she and her late husband endured, in the late nineteen-fifties, in China’s so-called Anti-Rightist Movement, and then, years later, during the Cultural Revolution—brings to life cruel repressions and offers a shocking reminder that the regime that perpetrated them is still in power, suppressing the evidence. (The site also offers his even-more-extensive documentary “Dead Souls,” in which many more victims discuss their experiences and help the filmmaker find physical traces of them in the landscape.)
“Full Moon in Paris”
Working with his lead actress Pascale Ogier, one of the real-life tragic heroines of modern French cinema, Éric Rohmer develops, in this 1984 drama, a story of youthful passion and cultural transition that’s both unique to his filmography and exemplary of both his lifelong themes and the times.
“In the Shadow of Women”
Philippe Garrel’s drama, from 2016, maps a filmmaking couple’s romantic crises onto political and historical conflicts, and does so with a self-aware and self-excoriating irony.
“Marcel Ophüls and Jean-Luc Godard: The Meeting in St.-Gervais”
The trend of in-depth interviews with filmmakers, begun in France in the nineteen-fifties, found its king in Jean-Luc Godard, whose sixty-year history of philosophical and rhetorical improvisation (as seen in his Instagram appearance earlier in April) is an art form in itself. His 2009 discussion with his near-contemporary Marcel Ophüls (which was also published in book form) is centered on the failed effort of the filmmakers to collaborate on a movie, about Judaism—a project that nonetheless made its mark on Godard’s subsequent work.
“Party Girl”
“Party Girl.” Photograph from Alamy
It took a trio of directors (including Samuel Theis, one of the sons of the protagonist) to make this vital and vigorous docu-fiction, from 2014, centered on Angélique Litzenburger, portraying herself, as a French woman who commutes across the border to Germany to work as the hostess at a strip club and whose personal life grows increasingly intertwined with her job.
“The Punishment”
Jean Rouch may be the most important little-known filmmaker in the history of cinema; his combination of documentary and fiction, his virtual invention of metafiction and first-person documentary, has proved startlingly influential, and many of his major films are available on the site, including “The Human Pyramid,” from 1961, and this confrontational and analytical fiction, from 1962—featuring several of the participants in that earlier film, in a story about a young woman, a high-school student in Paris, who conducts a personal social-science experiment into men’s private lives and probes the city’s unchallenged ambience of public sexual aggression.
“Rocky Road to Dublin”
This 1968 documentary, the journalist Peter Lennon’s only film, is a loving yet bitter vision of the political and religious oppression that prevailed in Ireland at the time and that threatened the nation’s rich artistic and cultural heritage. As evidence of its power, the film was banned in Ireland until 2004. (Paul Duane’s terrific supplement, “The Making of ‘Rocky Road to Dublin,’ ” is also streaming on the site.)
“Sir! No Sir!”
This documentary, by David Zeiger, movingly details protest against the Vietnam War from within the military itself, blending archival material with the accounts of veterans in recent years.
“Time Regained”
Raúl Ruiz’s daringly stylized adaptation of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel (centered on the final book), starring Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich, displays an imaginative and technical flair that meets Proust in the realm of memory and reconnects with silent-era movies in the domain of fantasy.
Crackle
“Afterglow”
Alan Rudolph’s rarefied sense of style gives fantasy physical impact and spangles melodrama with the stuff of dreams, as in this poignant and pugnacious tale of crisscrossing romances, from 1997, starring Julie Christie and Nick Nolte.
“Bellflower”
Evan Glodell’s first feature, from 2011, is an ecstatic terror of temptations and impulses, a tale of reckless romance and its self-punishing, guilt-riddled consequences.
“Bernie”
“Bernie.” Photograph from Millennium Entertainment / Everett
Richard Linklater’s local and personal artistry flourishes with hearty and sardonic glee in this comedy of murder, starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine and a host of townspeople, from 2012.
“The Big Chill”
Lawrence Kasdan’s 1983 drama packs a wide range of grand themes into its romantic plot—the dispersal of nineteen-sixties ideals into American life at large, the enshrinement of cultural nostalgia as a prime mainstream mode—and launched a new generation of actors that included Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Jeff Goldblum, and Meg Tilly. (It also offers that most welcome of psychosexual twists, a variation on a theme by Ernest Hemingway, updated for the era’s new mores.)
“Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice”
Paul Mazursky’s first feature, from 1969, is another generational marker—a comedy of emotional and sexual liberations and their smash-up impact on the young-middle-aged liberal bourgeoisie, incarnated with self-dramatizing flamboyance by the quartet of Elliott Gould, Natalie Wood, Dyan Cannon, and Robert Culp.


newyorker--2020-04-27--The Sondheim All-Star Concert Showed How Virtual Musical Theatre Can Work

As a teen-ager in the nineties who obsessed over “ Sweeney Todd ” while my peers listened to “ Nevermind , ” I wore out a VHS tape of “ Sondheim : A Celebration at Carnegie Hall.
” The broadcast , of a gala evening held in 1992 , featured a parade of luminaries interpreting Stephen Sondheim songs : Madeline Kahn on “ Getting Married Today , ” Glenn Close on “ Send in the Clowns.
” At the end , Bernadette Peters led a choir ( this being 1992 , the members wore red AIDS ribbons ) in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was clearly the theatrical event of the season , and I felt no less elated for watching it on a screen .
Sondheim , the most important living Broadway composer , turned ninety last month , at a time when gala concerts are not just impossible but almost unimaginable : a thing New York once had , often in springtime , with audiences in their nice shoes and dresses , saving their programs for posterity .
Poof !
In lieu of a planned birthday concert , Sunday night brought us “ Take Me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virtual concert filmed in the living rooms of the stars and streamed on YouTube , care of Broadway.com .
Directed by Paul Wontorek , it was a benefit for Artists Striving to End Poverty .
An expectant crowd gathered around their screens at 8 p.m .
Things did not start off promisingly .
Technical issues delayed the concert for more than an hour , and when its host , Raúl Esparza , showed up , he was on mute .
Theatre fans melted down on Twitter , and the YouTube comments section filled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thoughts and prayers with this tech crew ” ) .
Some filled in the gap themselves , including The New Yorker ’ s Emily Nussbaum , who sang her followers a few lines of “ Can That Boy Foxtrot !
” When the concert finally got off the ground—with the brassy overture of “ Merrily We Roll Along , ” where , for once , you could see each individual musician—the tone seemed uncertain .
The first two singers to appear , Sutton Foster and Neil Patrick Harris , gave cameos to their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vibe of a T.M.I .
Zoom meeting .
With apologies to the eleven-year-old Iain Armitage , who appeared later in the evening , Sondheim and plucky kids aren ’ t a great match .
Where was all the disillusionment and bitterness ?
Ah , there it was , when Judy Kuhn , a white headphone dangling from one ear , sang a doleful number from “ Dick Tracy.
” Katrina Lenk ( who , in a pandemicless world , would have been starring in “ Company ” on Broadway right now ) followed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Johanna , ” from “ Sweeney Todd , ” accompanying herself on guitar .
Virtual theatre is such a new and necessity-born medium that one hesitates to apply any critical pressure to it—nobody knows what ’ s going to work or not , either technically or emotionally .
The experiments have been worthy .
The 24 Hour Plays , which usually stages live plays and musicals that were written in a day , has been rolling out virtual monologues .
Richard Nelson , who has chronicled the life of the fictitious Apple family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Public Theatre , is premièring a new installment , filmed over Zoom .
But can musical theatre , that most extroverted of forms , succeed under quarantine ?
As it turns out , Sondheim ’ s work lent itself to self-isolated introspection .
Starting in the nineteen-fifties , when he wrote the lyrics to “ West Side Story ” and “ Gypsy , ” he brought fresh psychological depth to musical theatre , often in the form of musical soliloquies .
( As a boy , he wept watching “ Soliloquy ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he has described as formative . )
Sondheim ’ s characters exist , first and foremost , in their own heads .
When Michael Cerveris appeared on camera , crooning “ Finishing the Hat ” into the pale light of a window , it made as much sense as anything .
The song , delivered by Georges Seurat , in “ Sunday in the Park with George , ” is all about the painter ’ s inability to connect .
“ The Miller ’ s Son , ” from “ A Little Night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own rueful inwardness .
As an imagining of the character ’ s possible marital futures , it could very well take place in a studio apartment or , as Elizabeth Stanley sang it , beneath a multicolored blanket that formed a little fort .
Certain lyrics cut deep , given the circumstances .
When Mandy Patinkin , in a grassy yard , warbled , “ Where are the people out strolling on Sunday ?
” it brought a pang .
Two songs from the 1966 television musical “ Evening Primrose ” seemed designed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doozy—is about a poet who hides out from the world in a department store , where he discovers a secret community that has lived there for years , and emerges when the store is closed .
Laura Benanti , in what looked like a tiled bathroom , sang “ I Remember , ” in which the heroine longs for the world outside : “ I remember days , / Or at least I try / But as years go by / They ’ re a sort of haze.
” I hear you , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his silent intro , recovered beautifully with “ Take Me to the World , ” the song that gave the evening its title : We ’ ve grown accustomed to awkward FaceTime glimpses into people ’ s homes , and the concert delivered on that front , too .
Patti LuPone , who has been broadcasting wonderfully nutty dispatches from her basement , appeared upstairs , where she apparently keeps a marionette hanging from a bookcase , to sing “ Anyone Can Whistle.
” Donna Murphy , who got “ Send in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in front of an upright piano and two lit candles .
Melissa Errico , who sang “ Children and Art , ” scrunched in front of a bookshelf , and a volume entitled “ Irish Erotic Art ” became a subject of Internet fascination .
The aesthetic was reminiscent of self-produced audition tapes , from performers who likely haven ’ t had to audition for years : the great equalizer !
Two numbers , though , were so well conceived for this strange new medium that they left what might be a permanent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Someone in a Tree , ” which Sondheim has called his favorite of his own songs , tells the story of a nineteenth-century diplomatic negotiation between American and Japanese officials , as observed by hiding civilians who can pick up only bits and pieces .
Ann Harada , Austin Ku , Kelvin Moon Loh , and Thom Sesma performed it , in that now familiar “ Brady Bunch ” configuration , communicating through earpieces , and the song felt newly suspenseful and disjointed , like something out of a surveillance thriller .
Not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ladies—Christine Baranski , Meryl Streep , and Audra McDonald—showed up for an ultra-boozy version of “ Ladies Who Lunch , ” which Baranski kicked off with the perfect shot : her face refracted through a closeup of a wine glass , into which she emptied the last of a bottle of red .
Streep guzzled Scotch from what looked like a little-used office space .
It was camp heaven .

As a teen-ager in the nineties who obsessed over “Sweeney Todd” while my peers listened to “Nevermind,” I wore out a VHS tape of “Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall.” The broadcast, of a gala evening held in 1992, featured a parade of luminaries interpreting Stephen Sondheim songs: Madeline Kahn on “Getting Married Today,” Glenn Close on “Send in the Clowns.” At the end, Bernadette Peters led a choir (this being 1992, the members wore red AIDS ribbons) in a sublime rendition of “Sunday.” It was clearly the theatrical event of the season, and I felt no less elated for watching it on a screen.
Sondheim, the most important living Broadway composer, turned ninety last month, at a time when gala concerts are not just impossible but almost unimaginable: a thing New York once had, often in springtime, with audiences in their nice shoes and dresses, saving their programs for posterity. Poof! In lieu of a planned birthday concert, Sunday night brought us “Take Me to the World,” an all-star virtual concert filmed in the living rooms of the stars and streamed on YouTube, care of Broadway.com. Directed by Paul Wontorek, it was a benefit for Artists Striving to End Poverty. An expectant crowd gathered around their screens at 8 p.m.
Things did not start off promisingly. Technical issues delayed the concert for more than an hour, and when its host, Raúl Esparza, showed up, he was on mute. Theatre fans melted down on Twitter, and the YouTube comments section filled up with theatre-nerd anxiety (“okay thoughts and prayers with this tech crew”). Some filled in the gap themselves, including The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum, who sang her followers a few lines of “Can That Boy Foxtrot!” When the concert finally got off the ground—with the brassy overture of “Merrily We Roll Along,” where, for once, you could see each individual musician—the tone seemed uncertain. The first two singers to appear, Sutton Foster and Neil Patrick Harris, gave cameos to their adorable children, lending the concert the vibe of a T.M.I. Zoom meeting. With apologies to the eleven-year-old Iain Armitage, who appeared later in the evening, Sondheim and plucky kids aren’t a great match. Where was all the disillusionment and bitterness?
Ah, there it was, when Judy Kuhn, a white headphone dangling from one ear, sang a doleful number from “Dick Tracy.” Katrina Lenk (who, in a pandemicless world, would have been starring in “Company” on Broadway right now) followed, with a gorgeous rendition of “Johanna,” from “Sweeney Todd,” accompanying herself on guitar. Virtual theatre is such a new and necessity-born medium that one hesitates to apply any critical pressure to it—nobody knows what’s going to work or not, either technically or emotionally. The experiments have been worthy. The 24 Hour Plays, which usually stages live plays and musicals that were written in a day, has been rolling out virtual monologues. Richard Nelson, who has chronicled the life of the fictitious Apple family in a series of intimate plays at the Public Theatre, is premièring a new installment, filmed over Zoom.
But can musical theatre, that most extroverted of forms, succeed under quarantine? As it turns out, Sondheim’s work lent itself to self-isolated introspection. Starting in the nineteen-fifties, when he wrote the lyrics to “West Side Story” and “Gypsy,” he brought fresh psychological depth to musical theatre, often in the form of musical soliloquies. (As a boy, he wept watching “Soliloquy” from “Carousel,” an experience he has described as formative.) Sondheim’s characters exist, first and foremost, in their own heads. When Michael Cerveris appeared on camera, crooning “Finishing the Hat” into the pale light of a window, it made as much sense as anything. The song, delivered by Georges Seurat, in “Sunday in the Park with George,” is all about the painter’s inability to connect. “The Miller’s Son,” from “A Little Night Music,” also benefitted from its own rueful inwardness. As an imagining of the character’s possible marital futures, it could very well take place in a studio apartment or, as Elizabeth Stanley sang it, beneath a multicolored blanket that formed a little fort.
Certain lyrics cut deep, given the circumstances. When Mandy Patinkin, in a grassy yard, warbled, “Where are the people out strolling on Sunday?” it brought a pang. Two songs from the 1966 television musical “Evening Primrose” seemed designed for the social-distancing era. That show—a doozy—is about a poet who hides out from the world in a department store, where he discovers a secret community that has lived there for years, and emerges when the store is closed. Laura Benanti, in what looked like a tiled bathroom, sang “I Remember,” in which the heroine longs for the world outside: “I remember days, / Or at least I try / But as years go by / They’re a sort of haze.” I hear you, girl. And Esparza, returning after his silent intro, recovered beautifully with “Take Me to the World,” the song that gave the evening its title:
Let me see the world with clouds Take me to the world Out where I can push through crowds Take me to the world
We’ve grown accustomed to awkward FaceTime glimpses into people’s homes, and the concert delivered on that front, too. Patti LuPone, who has been broadcasting wonderfully nutty dispatches from her basement, appeared upstairs, where she apparently keeps a marionette hanging from a bookcase, to sing “Anyone Can Whistle.” Donna Murphy, who got “Send in the Clowns” honors this time, sang in front of an upright piano and two lit candles. Melissa Errico, who sang “Children and Art,” scrunched in front of a bookshelf, and a volume entitled “Irish Erotic Art” became a subject of Internet fascination. The aesthetic was reminiscent of self-produced audition tapes, from performers who likely haven’t had to audition for years: the great equalizer!
Two numbers, though, were so well conceived for this strange new medium that they left what might be a permanent imprint on the songs themselves. “Someone in a Tree,” which Sondheim has called his favorite of his own songs, tells the story of a nineteenth-century diplomatic negotiation between American and Japanese officials, as observed by hiding civilians who can pick up only bits and pieces. Ann Harada, Austin Ku, Kelvin Moon Loh, and Thom Sesma performed it, in that now familiar “Brady Bunch” configuration, communicating through earpieces, and the song felt newly suspenseful and disjointed, like something out of a surveillance thriller. Not long after, a trio of high-powered ladies—Christine Baranski, Meryl Streep, and Audra McDonald—showed up for an ultra-boozy version of “Ladies Who Lunch,” which Baranski kicked off with the perfect shot: her face refracted through a closeup of a wine glass, into which she emptied the last of a bottle of red. Streep guzzled Scotch in what looked like a little-used office space. It was camp heaven.
Late in the evening, Bernadette Peters sang an a-cappella version of “No One Is Alone,” from “Into the Woods,” with a vanity mirror and a turquoise lamp visible in the background. “I thought this might be just the perfect song right now,” Peters said. It was full of feeling, and, like the rest of the performance, easily could have entered the cringe zone that Gal Gadot and friends found themselves in last month, when they made their “Imagine” video. But it didn’t, in part because Sondheim doesn’t do platitudes. “No One Is Alone” isn’t about utopian togetherness; it’s about our responsibility to act as a community, to remember how our actions affect others, and it could just as well apply to defiant beachgoers or social-distancing protesters at state capitols. The concert closed out with the anthem “I’m Still Here,” from “Follies,” and it reminded me of something that has crossed my mind at seven o’clock, when people up and down my block cheer from their windows: the streets may be empty, but we’re all, in fact, still here. Let’s hope that, in ten years, we’ll be celebrating Sondheim’s hundredth birthday at Carnegie Hall, as the theatre gods intended.


newyorker--2020-04-27--A City at the Peak of Crisis

A City at the Peak of Crisis

Experts predicted that Wednesday , April 15th , would be a peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City , its epicenter .
On that day , a crew of New Yorker writers talked with people all over the city , in every circumstance and walk of life , to form a portrait of a city in crisis .
A group-station manager for the subway talks about keeping the transit system running for those who can ’ t live without it ; a respiratory therapist copes with break-time conversations about death and dying ; graduating medical students get up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in generations ; and a new mother talks about giving birth on a day marked by tragedy for so many families .
The hour features contributions from writers including William Finnegan , Helen Rosner , Jia Tolentino , Kelefa Sanneh , and Adam Gopnik , who says , “ One never knows whether to applaud the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life , or look aghast at the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life .
That ’ s the mystery of the pandemic.
” • @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responding to a sick housemate to the pros and cons of ordering food .
• Can survivors help cure the disease and rescue the economy ?
• The long crusade of Dr. Anthony Fauci , the infectious-disease expert pinned between Donald Trump and the American people .
• The success of Hong Kong and Singapore in stemming the spread holds lessons for how to contain it in the United States .
• The coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a year before a vaccine is widely available .
• With each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a new treatment .
Can we prepare antivirals to combat the next global crisis ?
• How pandemics have propelled public-health innovations , prefigured revolutions , and redrawn maps .
• What to read , watch , cook , and listen to under coronavirus quarantine .

Photograph by Christopher Gregory-Rivera for The New Yorker
Experts predicted that Wednesday, April 15th, would be a peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, its epicenter. On that day, a crew of New Yorker writers talked with people all over the city, in every circumstance and walk of life, to form a portrait of a city in crisis. A group-station manager for the subway talks about keeping the transit system running for those who can’t live without it; a respiratory therapist copes with break-time conversations about death and dying; graduating medical students get up the courage to confront the worst crisis in generations; and a new mother talks about giving birth on a day marked by tragedy for so many families. The hour features contributions from writers including William Finnegan, Helen Rosner, Jia Tolentino, Kelefa Sanneh, and Adam Gopnik, who says, “One never knows whether to applaud the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life, or look aghast at the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life. That’s the mystery of the pandemic.”
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-04-27--Two Paths for the Comic Novel (and the Funniest Books to Read in Quarantine)

One of the minor miseries of disaster is that it can turn you into a cliché .
After weeks of unconsciously absorbing quarantine Twitter ’ s advice to read P. G. Wodehouse , I alighted on a brilliant idea .
Why not read some Wodehouse ?
This was , I thought , an inspiration worthy of Jeeves , the author ’ s signature creation : a gentleman ’ s gentleman who ’ s always “ shimmering ” “ noiselessly ” to the rescue of his employer , a cheerful idiot named Bertram Wooster .
Wodehouse , born in Surrey in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ language ’ s funniest writers .
His prodigious joke density , matched by the jokes ’ prodigious hit rate , makes each book a prolonged assault on despair .
And though the titles ( “ Carry On , Jeeves ” ; “ The Inimitable Jeeves ” ) give the valet first billing , to me , Bertie , who narrates , is the star .
He ’ s a sweet vacuity—the perfect foil for his servant , who is omni-competent and reserved .
Scholars have dissected Bertie ’ s wordplay—a cataract of malapropisms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ similes , and invented terms—but even a casual reader can understand his appeal .
He ’ s a protagonist for people who feel at a loss , and who would perhaps like to feel a more charming , innocuous version of it .
So it was that I found myself chopping apples for charoset , for a Zoom Seder , with some wonderful phrases tumbling through my brain : “ tinkerty tonk , ” “ a marked coldness of the feet , ” and “ You must have heard of newts .
Those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about in ponds.
” I ’ d chosen “ Right Ho , Jeeves , ” widely regarded as the crown jewel of the series , and it was delightful : full of human decency , happy endings , low stakes , and the sort of immaculate plotting that suggests an ordered cosmos .
In the novel , Bertie returns from a summer vacation in Cannes to learn that his favorite aunt , Dahlia , wants him to distribute prizes at an end-of-year ceremony at Market Snodsbury Grammar School .
Also , his cousin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tuppy ; his hopeless friend Gussie has fallen in love with “ the Bassett , ” a drippy pal of Angela ’ s ; and his aunt ’ s genius of a chef , Anatole , is considering alternate employment .
Bertie resolves to fix things , but his schemes leave everyone , as he puts it , “ waist high in the gumbo.
” The story line boils down to ineffective benevolence ( Bertie ) bailed out by effective benevolence ( Jeeves ) .
When Bertie remarks , of his hired hero @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something that seems to soothe and hypnotize , ” he ’ s describing the novel , too .
Wodehouse ’ s books induce a passivity that seems related in part to the nature of humor—a good joke “ cracks you up , ” takes away your control—and in part to the reader ’ s forced identification with Bertie , who is helpless , swaddled in luxury .
We never gain access to Jeeves ’ s inner world .
The fact that we see through the eyes of the young master is what makes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ philosophy , appealing .
( Bertie has money and servants ; his “ place ” is pretty cushy . )
But the novels aren ’ t conservative in the manner of traditional comedies .
Whereas “ A Midsummer Night ’ s Dream ” and “ Twelfth Night ” invert and unpick the social order , and then reassert it , Wodehouse takes an approach that is maximally consoling , and maximally ironic .
For him , no contradiction exists between Bertie being secure in his privilege and Jeeves running the show .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ charge , Wodehouse insists , and what it wants is to solve your problems .
As funny novels go , “ Straight Man , ” by Richard Russo , is more maror than charoset .
Published in 1997 , the book follows an English professor , William Henry ( Hank ) Devereaux , Jr. , as he contends with bickering colleagues , stalled aspirations , ill-advised crushes , domestic upset , and a possible kidney stone .
Hank is wisecracking and anarchic—his dean calls him “ the physical embodiment of the perversity principle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He can ’ t help converting his disappointments into jokes : in Hank ’ s first person , unlike Bertie ’ s , sorrow pursues sarcasm like a mutt chasing its tail .
Wodehouse is an equal-opportunity smart aleck .
Russo , by contrast , picks his targets .
Writing about Jane Austen ’ s fiction , the critic James Wood noted that “ there are the minor characters , who seem to belong to the theatre , and who are theatrically mocked and ‘ corrected ’ by the author in her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are the great heroines .
.
.
heroic because they exercise their consciousness , who seem to belong to the newer world of the novel and not of the theatre , and who are not mocked but gradually comprehended and finally forgiven.
” Like Austen , Russo distinguishes carefully between his protagonist , decent and soulful beneath an acerbic exterior , and the supporting cast , which includes a campus cop with a God complex and several unattractive , unpleasant women .
( The handful of female characters who escape Hank ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preternaturally good and beautiful .
While reading , I ached for my preteen self , who adored this book and didn ’ t notice anything amiss . )
But , onward !
We are meant to find Hank ’ s midlife crisis fascinating , and—good news—it is .
Although the professor published a successful novel at twenty-nine , he still hasn ’ t , at forty-nine , escaped the shadow of his father , a giant of literary criticism .
Hank serves as interim chair of an underfunded , Balkanized , and sexually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s not fantasizing about his secretary , he ’ s titillating himself with visions of his lissome wife in bed with his colleagues . )
Eventually , Hank appears on live television , brandishing a goose and vowing to kill the inhabitants of the university duck pond one by one , until he receives a budget .
The book ’ s mirth is laced with melancholy , its gags centered on pain .
Contemplating kidney stones , Hank reflects , “ I ’ m less afraid of the knife than of the comic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will consider it just like me to have a joke affliction .
‘ This too will pass , ’ they ’ ll assure me.
” Hank ’ s commentary provides the lion ’ s share of the book ’ s humor .
His injured schnoz ( a poet whapped him with her notebook ) is funny because he says it is , or because he makes it so .
( “ Does it hurt ?
” a frenemy asks .
Hank , “ anxious to please , ” replies , “ Sure does.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ wavers between sorrow and hilarity , wants to emphasize that applying a comic framework to life is a choice .
Hank refuses to play the straight man in his routine with the universe .
Seriousness poses danger ; better to make the cracks than to endure them .
In this sense , Hank ’ s clowning illuminates his character , even invests it with tragedy , and Russo offers an alternative to the Wodehouse novels .
Bertie is an innocent portrayed ironically ; Hank is an ironist portrayed sincerely .
One path leads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leads to a set of implied instructions : This is how humor might help—or fail to help—a person cope .
Comic fiction sometimes seems less like a genre than like the treatment of a question : What is our disposition toward a fickle universe ?
Do we claim agency through humor ?
Or strive for a jolly and wide-eyed surrender ?
From an aesthetic perspective , one vision—pessimistic or optimistic , active or passive—isn ’ t better , or funnier , than another .
But there ’ s a larger truth here .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ not seeking out the books that made me laugh as a kid .
Now I am .
This fact somehow seems to get at the essence of comedy—an art that becomes more real , more fully itself , within a shared , tragic frame .
With that in mind , here are some honorable mentions for the funniest books to read in quarantine :

One of the minor miseries of disaster is that it can turn you into a cliché. After weeks of unconsciously absorbing quarantine Twitter’s advice to read P. G. Wodehouse, I alighted on a brilliant idea. Why not read some Wodehouse? This was, I thought, an inspiration worthy of Jeeves, the author’s signature creation: a gentleman’s gentleman who’s always “shimmering” “noiselessly” to the rescue of his employer, a cheerful idiot named Bertram Wooster. Wodehouse, born in Surrey in 1881, remains one of the English language’s funniest writers. His prodigious joke density, matched by the jokes’ prodigious hit rate, makes each book a prolonged assault on despair. And though the titles (“Carry On, Jeeves”; “The Inimitable Jeeves”) give the valet first billing, to me, Bertie, who narrates, is the star. He’s a sweet vacuity—the perfect foil for his servant, who is omni-competent and reserved. Scholars have dissected Bertie’s wordplay—a cataract of malapropisms, Spoonerisms, transferred epithets, improbable similes, and invented terms—but even a casual reader can understand his appeal. He’s a protagonist for people who feel at a loss, and who would perhaps like to feel a more charming, innocuous version of it.
So it was that I found myself chopping apples for charoset, for a Zoom Seder, with some wonderful phrases tumbling through my brain: “tinkerty tonk,” “a marked coldness of the feet,” and “You must have heard of newts. Those little sort of lizard things that charge about in ponds.” I’d chosen “Right Ho, Jeeves,” widely regarded as the crown jewel of the series, and it was delightful: full of human decency, happy endings, low stakes, and the sort of immaculate plotting that suggests an ordered cosmos. In the novel, Bertie returns from a summer vacation in Cannes to learn that his favorite aunt, Dahlia, wants him to distribute prizes at an end-of-year ceremony at Market Snodsbury Grammar School. Also, his cousin Angela is quarreling with her fiancé, Tuppy; his hopeless friend Gussie has fallen in love with “the Bassett,” a drippy pal of Angela’s; and his aunt’s genius of a chef, Anatole, is considering alternate employment. Bertie resolves to fix things, but his schemes leave everyone, as he puts it, “waist high in the gumbo.” The story line boils down to ineffective benevolence (Bertie) bailed out by effective benevolence (Jeeves). When Bertie remarks, of his hired hero, that “there is about him something that seems to soothe and hypnotize,” he’s describing the novel, too.
Wodehouse’s books induce a passivity that seems related in part to the nature of humor—a good joke “cracks you up,” takes away your control—and in part to the reader’s forced identification with Bertie, who is helpless, swaddled in luxury. We never gain access to Jeeves’s inner world. The fact that we see through the eyes of the young master is what makes Wodehouse’s conservatism, his everything-in-its-place philosophy, appealing. (Bertie has money and servants; his “place” is pretty cushy.) But the novels aren’t conservative in the manner of traditional comedies. Whereas “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Twelfth Night” invert and unpick the social order, and then reassert it, Wodehouse takes an approach that is maximally consoling, and maximally ironic. For him, no contradiction exists between Bertie being secure in his privilege and Jeeves running the show. The intellectual one per cent is—has always been—in charge, Wodehouse insists, and what it wants is to solve your problems.
As funny novels go, “Straight Man,” by Richard Russo, is more maror than charoset. Published in 1997, the book follows an English professor, William Henry (Hank) Devereaux, Jr., as he contends with bickering colleagues, stalled aspirations, ill-advised crushes, domestic upset, and a possible kidney stone. Hank is wisecracking and anarchic—his dean calls him “the physical embodiment of the perversity principle”—but hangdog, a tearful clown. He can’t help converting his disappointments into jokes: in Hank’s first person, unlike Bertie’s, sorrow pursues sarcasm like a mutt chasing its tail.
Wodehouse is an equal-opportunity smart aleck. Russo, by contrast, picks his targets. Writing about Jane Austen’s fiction, the critic James Wood noted that “there are the minor characters, who seem to belong to the theatre, and who are theatrically mocked and ‘corrected’ by the author in her old 18th-century satiric mode; and there are the great heroines . . . heroic because they exercise their consciousness, who seem to belong to the newer world of the novel and not of the theatre, and who are not mocked but gradually comprehended and finally forgiven.” Like Austen, Russo distinguishes carefully between his protagonist, decent and soulful beneath an acerbic exterior, and the supporting cast, which includes a campus cop with a God complex and several unattractive, unpleasant women. (The handful of female characters who escape Hank’s contempt are crudely drawn, too: preternaturally good and beautiful. While reading, I ached for my preteen self, who adored this book and didn’t notice anything amiss.)
But, onward! We are meant to find Hank’s midlife crisis fascinating, and—good news—it is. Although the professor published a successful novel at twenty-nine, he still hasn’t, at forty-nine, escaped the shadow of his father, a giant of literary criticism. Hank serves as interim chair of an underfunded, Balkanized, and sexually incestuous department. (When he’s not fantasizing about his secretary, he’s titillating himself with visions of his lissome wife in bed with his colleagues.) Eventually, Hank appears on live television, brandishing a goose and vowing to kill the inhabitants of the university duck pond one by one, until he receives a budget. The book’s mirth is laced with melancholy, its gags centered on pain. Contemplating kidney stones, Hank reflects, “I’m less afraid of the knife than of the comic dimension of the malady. My colleagues will consider it just like me to have a joke affliction. ‘This too will pass,’ they’ll assure me.”
Hank’s commentary provides the lion’s share of the book’s humor. His injured schnoz (a poet whapped him with her notebook) is funny because he says it is, or because he makes it so. (“Does it hurt?” a frenemy asks. Hank, “anxious to please,” replies, “Sure does.”) Russo, whose protagonist often wavers between sorrow and hilarity, wants to emphasize that applying a comic framework to life is a choice. Hank refuses to play the straight man in his routine with the universe. Seriousness poses danger; better to make the cracks than to endure them. In this sense, Hank’s clowning illuminates his character, even invests it with tragedy, and Russo offers an alternative to the Wodehouse novels. Bertie is an innocent portrayed ironically; Hank is an ironist portrayed sincerely. One path leads to escapist distraction, whereas the other leads to a set of implied instructions: This is how humor might help—or fail to help—a person cope.
Comic fiction sometimes seems less like a genre than like the treatment of a question: What is our disposition toward a fickle universe? Do we claim agency through humor? Or strive for a jolly and wide-eyed surrender? From an aesthetic perspective, one vision—pessimistic or optimistic, active or passive—isn’t better, or funnier, than another. But there’s a larger truth here. Before the shelter-in-place orders, I was not seeking out the books that made me laugh as a kid. Now I am. This fact somehow seems to get at the essence of comedy—an art that becomes more real, more fully itself, within a shared, tragic frame. With that in mind, here are some honorable mentions for the funniest books to read in quarantine:
“Lightning Rods,” by Helen DeWitt
In this workplace satyr play, a temp agency provides offices with women who offer anonymous sex to male employees. The idea is to enhance productivity and reduce the harassment of female employees. DeWitt’s characters are depraved screwballs, and yet the blandness of the marketing jargon they use to communicate somehow suits them perfectly. Laughter varietal: hard and mean. (Pair with bitter coffee.)
“Lucky Jim,” by Kingsley Amis
When a character in “Straight Man” refers to William Henry Devereaux, Jr., as “Lucky Hank,” it’s an homage to one of the first dyspeptic-professor novels, published in 1954 by Kingsley Amis. Jim Dixon, a lecturer in medieval history, boasts one of literature’s worst bosses, a bore named Welch. Jim must also contend with Welch’s pretentious son and a neurotic girlfriend, Margaret. Laughter varietal: giddy and detached—the joy of rock bottom. (Pair with whiskey. You’ll see why.)
“We Are Never Meeting in Real Life,” by Samantha Irby
Irby’s essays, which touch on her hardscrabble childhood and her trip to Nashville to scatter her father’s ashes, are as tart and moving as those subjects suggest—and also hilarious, like finding something you’d lost in the stupidest possible place. Chapter titles include “Do You Guys Pay Your Fucking Bills or What?” and “I’m in Love and It’s Boring.” Laughter varietal: strangely affirming. (Pair with “cupcake-flavored vodka,” in honor of the author’s fake bachelorette application.)
“Catch-22,” by Joseph Heller
One cannot not put “Catch-22” on this list. The 1961 war satire, starring the luckless bombardier Yossarian, is as imperishable as its characters are the opposite. It’s also a heartbreaker. Laughter varietal: full body. (Pair with fresh eggs from the syndicate.)
“Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why: Essays,” by Alexandra Petri
This forthcoming book by the Washington Post humor columnist addresses the soothing wonders of the contemporary political landscape. Petri’s conceit, in other words, is that everything is great, and she goes about proving it with all the vim of “The Colbert Report.” Laughter varietal: The kind where the other avenues of emotional release have been exhausted and your oven is disgorging baked goods with a Strega Nona swiftness and people are sick and dying and the President is a monster. (Pair with wine and this round-up.)