newyorker--2020-09-13--Michael Cohen’s Memoir of Jilted Love

Michael Cohen’s Memoir of Jilted Love

It begins , as so many love stories do , with an all-consuming infatuation .
The year is 2006 , and Michael Cohen , a forty-year-old New York City personal-injury lawyer and real-estate investor who made his fortune in the shadowy taxi-medallion market , is summoned to meet with Donald Trump , the prominent American developer and star of the NBC reality show “ The Apprentice , ” on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump ’ s gilded tower on Fifth Avenue .
Trump , who had apparently been told by his eldest son , Don , Jr. , of Cohen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , needs help cowing a rogue board of directors at one of his residential properties Although an owner of units in Trump-branded properties and a longtime fan of “ The Art of the Deal , ” Cohen had previously met Trump only in passing .
At their first face-to-face appointment , however , he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the hulking businessman , who is , by turns , complimentary and tough-talking .
“ Donald Trump ’ s seduction began the way it would continue for years , with flattery , proximity to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out-of-control ambitions and desires , ” Cohen writes in “ Disloyal , ” a memoir of his chaotic , more-than-decade-long tenure as Trump ’ s personal attorney .
For Cohen , Trump ’ s presence is “ irresistible , intoxicating , thrilling , ” and his unembarrassed will to dominate everyone around him renders Cohen “ incredulous , excited , overwhelmed.
” As Cohen watches Trump bullying his building ’ s board at a meeting , a few days later , he becomes determined to match the great man ’ s aggression .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ himself— “ All eyes were on me , but the only pair that I really cared about was Trump ’ s , ” he writes .
When he ’ s done with his speech , Cohen gives a copy of it to the businessman , with the words “ Here , Mr. Trump , now you will remember me forever.
” As any student of foreshadowing could tell you , such early bliss can only end in disaster .
The romance between Trump and Cohen came to its unfortunate conclusion in 2018 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eight criminal counts , including campaign-finance violations linked to hush money that he paid to the porn actress Stephanie Clifford , known professionally as Stormy Daniels , Trump ’ s alleged onetime lover .
Cohen later testified before Congress , implicating Trump in the plot .
The lawyer means the book to be a personal mea culpa , as well as a broader warning : he wants America to realize the kind of thuggish man it ’ s up against before it ’ s too late , cautioning that Trump will likely not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ greater-good reasoning is not what truly animates “ Disloyal.
” The book is written with all the heat of a spurned former lover , and much of its energy comes from the kind of disbelief , pain , and longing experienced by the wronged heroine of a bodice ripper , who is calamitously drawn into the arms of a heartless rogue , badly used , and tossed aside .
The book traffics in several other genres , too : it ’ s the story of Trump as a Jim Jones-like figure , attracting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s an office yarn , recounting the intrigues among a group of co-workers jockeying for influence under the watchful eye of a mercurial boss ; and it ’ s a tale of criminal initiation , à la Scorsese ’ s “ Goodfellas , ” in which an apprentice is drawn in by Trump ’ s mob-boss ways , and finds himself in over his head .
This makes for a pretty enjoyable mix , which is surprising , since “ Disloyal ” is not exactly a good book .
It is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and often repetitive .
( “ I had taken leave of my senses , ” Cohen writes several times , as an explanation for the many wrongs he committed as Trump ’ s right-hand man . )
What the book does do well , however , is give a granular sense of the chaos that is life in the Trump vortex .
In July , Mary Trump , a clinical psychologist and the President ’ s estranged niece , published “ Too Much and Never Enough , ” a book that purported to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the goings-on within the Trump family , and to explain how the relationship dynamics therein helped form “ the world ’ s most dangerous man.
” But there was something thin and abstract about the book , which suffered from a dearth of close-at-hand reporting .
One got the sense that the Trump family spent little time together , and that meaningful engagement was rare .
In a way , this indirectly proved the book ’ s point : that Trump likely became the entitled , lawless individual that he is due @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distance .
“ Disloyal ” is more satisfying , perhaps because it arrives not from Trump ’ s family but from within the palpitating walls of his chaotic , teetering business empire .
The book is full of stories that are by now familiar .
Cohen alleges that Trump approved the hush-money payment to Daniels ; that he knew about a catch-and-kill operation arranged with the National Enquirer , which was meant to buy the silence of Karen McDougal , a Playboy model with whom Trump had an affair ; that he knew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in June , 2016 , when members of his campaign attempted to procure damaging information about Hillary Clinton from a Russian source ; that he has spoken disparagingly of Black Americans and of African political leaders , including Nelson Mandela .
( Trump has denied the book ’ s allegations . )
Where “ Disloyal ” becomes truly engaging , however , is in its more quotidian details , which reveal the sleazy , petty , combative ambience of the Trump Organization , and , later , of the Trump Administration .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is almost fun .
( Though , admittedly , this might be fun of the “ if we didn ’ t laugh , we ’ d cry ” variety . )
The mundanity of the skirmishes that Cohen describes suggests the ubiquity of grift and underhandedness in Trump ’ s world .
Cohen attempts to threaten his way out of paying Benjamin Moore for paint used in renovating a golf resort .
( Trump had “ decided to go with the absolute cheapest level-one paint , which is pure garbage , ” and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revealed , demanded his money back . )
Cohen leans on venders to settle their claims after Trump University has fallen apart , coercing them into accepting twenty cents for every dollar owed to them .
More than once , he calls Trump ’ s wife , Melania , at his boss ’ s direction and attempts to convince her that her husband has not cheated on her , or has not sexually assaulted someone .
( Of one such conversation with Melania , Cohen writes , “ We performed a game of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the deception but following an unspoken rule that we wouldn ’ t acknowledge that reality.
” ) At one point , Cohen fires his office nemesis , Trump ’ s first campaign manager , Corey Lewandowski , after he is caught leaking salacious stories about Ivanka and Jared Kushner to the press .
( “ Lewandowski entered with his usual cocky strut , a Red Bull in hand , as if he was jacked for whatever was coming his way .
But the smirk on his face didn ’ t last long.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ adds a picture with the caption “ Lewandowski , drunk.
” There is fun , too , in the rendering of Cohen himself .
Cohen has always struck me as a figure straight out of central casting .
Wearing a loud checked sports jacket , his salt-and-pepper hair a bit unruly , with a cell phone to his ear , speaking in a marked Long Island accent , he was the perfect embodiment of a culturally familiar trope : the crooked , fast-talking , wheeling-and-dealing attorney , always at the ready to cajole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Cohen leans into this role .
Much like Trump ’ s onetime attorney Roy Cohn , Cohen is menacing , but unlike his predecessor , who seemed almost satanically unruffled , Cohen is also a bit of a schmoe .
Early on in his tenure , Cohen tries to find a legal loophole to get Trump , whom he consistently refers to as “ Boss , ” out of a contract , all the while hectoring himself : “ Think , you dope , I said to myself .
Think , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ someone , he refers to him as a “ jerkoff ” or a “ real charmer.
” At one point , he gears up to twist a contractor ’ s arm : “ You know who you ’ re taking to , buddy boy , I thought .
Fuck you .
Game on.
” There is something so guileless in his performance of toughness , so nearly naïve , that , despite its very real , very unfortunate effects on almost everyone whom Cohen came into contact with in his time as Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t help but feel a little touched .
In 2018 , as the F.B.I .
closed in , Trump distanced himself from his attorney , which must have hurt enormously .
That hurt still pulses on every page of “ Disloyal.
” “ What worried me .
.
.
was that Trump had described me as ‘ one of my personal attorneys , ’ ” Cohen writes .
“ All of a sudden I didn ’ t have a name ?
All of a sudden I ’ m only one of his attorneys @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Disloyal , ” for all its sliminess , a certain gravitas , and an atmosphere of impending doom .
“ If I stayed loyal to Trump , he would stay loyal to me .
I had to stay the course .
Always stay the course .
Be loyal .
I was going to be fine , ” Cohen writes , before adding , “ But in the back of my mind , I knew trouble was coming.
” Trump , as Cohen soon finds out , and as anyone who has observed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to himself .

It begins, as so many love stories do, with an all-consuming infatuation. The year is 2006, and Michael Cohen, a forty-year-old New York City personal-injury lawyer and real-estate investor who made his fortune in the shadowy taxi-medallion market, is summoned to meet with Donald Trump, the prominent American developer and star of the NBC reality show “The Apprentice,” on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump’s gilded tower on Fifth Avenue. Trump, who had apparently been told by his eldest son, Don, Jr., of Cohen’s reputation as a can-do fixer, needs help cowing a rogue board of directors at one of his residential properties. Although he was an owner of units in Trump-branded properties and a longtime fan of “The Art of the Deal,” Cohen had previously met Trump only in passing. At their first face-to-face appointment, however, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the hulking businessman, who is, by turns, complimentary and tough-talking. “Donald Trump’s seduction began the way it would continue for years, with flattery, proximity to celebrity and power, and my own out-of-control ambitions and desires,” Cohen writes in “Disloyal,” a memoir of his chaotic, more-than-decade-long tenure as Trump’s personal attorney. For Cohen, Trump’s presence is “irresistible, intoxicating, thrilling,” and his unembarrassed will to dominate everyone around him renders Cohen “incredulous, excited, overwhelmed.” As Cohen watches Trump bullying his building’s board at a meeting, a few days later, he becomes determined to match the great man’s aggression. He later thunders at the board members himself—“All eyes were on me, but the only pair that I really cared about was Trump’s,” he writes. When he’s done with his speech, Cohen gives a copy of it to the businessman, with the words “Here, Mr. Trump, now you will remember me forever.”
As any student of foreshadowing could tell you, such early bliss can only end in disaster. The romance between Trump and Cohen came to its unfortunate conclusion in 2018, when the once-faithful attorney pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts, including campaign-finance violations linked to hush money that he paid to the porn actress Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, Trump’s alleged onetime lover. Cohen later testified before Congress, implicating Trump in the plot. The lawyer means the book to be a personal mea culpa, as well as a broader warning: he wants America to realize the kind of thuggish man it’s up against before it’s too late, cautioning that Trump will likely not leave office peacefully. But this professed greater-good reasoning is not what truly animates “Disloyal.” The book is written with all the heat of a spurned former lover, and much of its energy comes from the kind of disbelief, pain, and longing experienced by the wronged heroine of a bodice ripper, who is calamitously drawn into the arms of a heartless rogue, badly used, and tossed aside. The book traffics in several other genres, too: it’s the story of Trump as a Jim Jones-like figure, attracting sycophantic acolytes with his mesmeric charisma; it’s an office yarn, recounting the intrigues among a group of co-workers jockeying for influence under the watchful eye of a mercurial boss; and it’s a tale of criminal initiation, à la Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” in which an apprentice is drawn in by Trump’s mob-boss ways, and finds himself in over his head.
This makes for a pretty enjoyable mix, which is surprising, since “Disloyal” is not exactly a good book. It is awkwardly written, riddled with clichés, and often repetitive. (“I had taken leave of my senses,” Cohen writes several times, as an explanation for the many wrongs he committed as Trump’s right-hand man.) What the book does do well, however, is give a granular sense of the chaos that is life in the Trump vortex. In July, Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and the President’s estranged niece, published “Too Much and Never Enough,” a book that purported to give readers an insider’s look at the goings-on within the Trump family, and to explain how the relationship dynamics therein helped form “the world’s most dangerous man.” But there was something thin and abstract about the book, which suffered from a dearth of close-at-hand reporting. One got the sense that the Trump family spent little time together, and that meaningful engagement was rare. In a way, this indirectly proved the book’s point: that Trump likely became the entitled, lawless individual that he is due to his family’s cruelty and distance.
“Disloyal” is more satisfying, perhaps because it arrives not from Trump’s family but from within the palpitating walls of his chaotic, teetering business empire. The book is full of stories that are by now familiar. Cohen alleges that Trump approved the hush-money payment to Daniels; that he knew about a catch-and-kill operation arranged with the National Enquirer, which was meant to buy the silence of Karen McDougal, a Playboy model with whom Trump had an affair; that he knew about a meeting in Trump Tower, in June, 2016, when members of his campaign attempted to procure damaging information about Hillary Clinton from a Russian source; that he has spoken disparagingly of Black Americans and of African political leaders, including Nelson Mandela. (Trump has denied the book’s allegations.) Where “Disloyal” becomes truly engaging, however, is in its more quotidian details, which reveal the sleazy, petty, combative ambience of the Trump Organization, and, later, of the Trump Administration. In this, reading Cohen’s book is almost fun. (Though, admittedly, this might be fun of the “if we didn’t laugh, we’d cry” variety.)
The mundanity of the skirmishes that Cohen describes suggests the ubiquity of grift and underhandedness in Trump’s world. Cohen attempts to threaten his way out of paying Benjamin Moore for paint used in renovating a golf resort. (Trump had “decided to go with the absolute cheapest level-one paint, which is pure garbage,” and then, when the poor results were revealed, demanded his money back.) Cohen leans on venders to settle their claims after Trump University has fallen apart, coercing them into accepting twenty cents for every dollar owed to them. More than once, he calls Trump’s wife, Melania, at his boss’s direction and attempts to convince her that her husband has not cheated on her, or has not sexually assaulted someone. (Of one such conversation with Melania, Cohen writes, “We performed a game of kabuki theater, each of us aware of the deception but following an unspoken rule that we wouldn’t acknowledge that reality.”) At one point, Cohen fires his office nemesis, Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, after he is caught leaking salacious stories about Ivanka and Jared Kushner to the press. (“Lewandowski entered with his usual cocky strut, a Red Bull in hand, as if he was jacked for whatever was coming his way. But the smirk on his face didn’t last long.”) For good measure, Cohen adds a picture with the caption “Lewandowski, drunk.”
There is fun, too, in the rendering of Cohen himself. Cohen has always struck me as a figure straight out of central casting. Wearing a loud checked sports jacket, his salt-and-pepper hair a bit unruly, with a cell phone to his ear, speaking in a marked Long Island accent, he was the perfect embodiment of a culturally familiar trope: the crooked, fast-talking, wheeling-and-dealing attorney, always at the ready to cajole or threaten. In “Disloyal,” Cohen leans into this role. Much like Trump’s onetime attorney Roy Cohn, Cohen is menacing, but unlike his predecessor, who seemed almost satanically unruffled, Cohen is also a bit of a schmoe. Early on in his tenure, Cohen tries to find a legal loophole to get Trump, whom he consistently refers to as “Boss,” out of a contract, all the while hectoring himself: “Think, you dope, I said to myself. Think, you dope.” When he is displeased with someone, he refers to him as a “jerkoff” or a “real charmer.” At one point, he gears up to twist a contractor’s arm: “You know who you’re taking to, buddy boy, I thought. Fuck you. Game on.” There is something so guileless in his performance of toughness, so nearly naïve, that, despite its very real, very unfortunate effects on almost everyone whom Cohen came into contact with in his time as Trump’s lackey, I couldn’t help but feel a little touched. In 2018, as the F.B.I. closed in, Trump distanced himself from his attorney, which must have hurt enormously. That hurt still pulses on every page of “Disloyal.” “What worried me . . . was that Trump had described me as ‘one of my personal attorneys,’ ” Cohen writes. “All of a sudden I didn’t have a name? All of a sudden I’m only one of his attorneys?” This sense of betrayal gives “Disloyal,” for all its sliminess, a certain gravitas, and an atmosphere of impending doom. “If I stayed loyal to Trump, he would stay loyal to me. I had to stay the course. Always stay the course. Be loyal. I was going to be fine,” Cohen writes, before adding, “But in the back of my mind, I knew trouble was coming.” Trump, as Cohen soon finds out, and as anyone who has observed his Presidency knows, is loyal only to himself.
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-09-13--How the Trump Campaign’s Mobile App Is Collecting Massive Amounts of Voter Data

Since the Trump campaign set up a shell company called American Made Media Consultants , in 2018 , an entity it describes as a “ vendor responsible for arranging and executing media buys and related services at fair market value , ” it ’ s been nearly impossible to know whom the campaign is paying , for what , and how much .
But , on May 27th , Alan Knitowski , the C.E.O .
of Phunware , an Austin-based ad broker and software company , announced a “ strategic relationship with American Made Media Consultants on the development , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Trump-Pence 2020 Reelection Campaign ’ s mobile application portfolio.
” Although Phunware never showed up in the campaign ’ s F.E.C .
reports , Phunware ’ s S.E.C .
filings show that , since last year , it has been paid around four million dollars by A.M.M.C .
On its face , Phunware seems like a strange choice to develop the campaign ’ s app .
Before working for President Trump , Phunware ’ s software was being used in relatively few applications , the most popular being a horoscope app .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ been embroiled in a lawsuit with Uber , a former client of the company ’ s ad-placement business .
The dispute stems from a yearlong investigation by two former Phunware employees who discovered that the company was pretending to place Uber ads on Web sites like CNN when , in fact , they were appearing on pornography sites , among others , if they appeared at all .
But , according to former Phunware employees and business associates , the company ’ s value to the Trump campaign is not in software development @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paying Phunware four million dollars for an app , ” a former business partner of the company told me .
“ They are paying for data .
They are paying for targeted advertising services .
Imagine if every time I open my phone I see a campaign message that Joe Biden ’ s America means we ’ re going to have war in the streets .
That ’ s the service the Trump campaign and Brad Parscale ” —the Trump campaign ’ s senior adviser for data and digital operations— “ have bought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of the package.
” The Trump 2020 app is a massive data-collection tool in its own right .
When it launched , on April 23rd , Parscale , who was then Trump ’ s campaign manager , urged his followers on Facebook to “ download the groundbreaking Official Trump 2020 App—unlike other lame political apps you ’ ve seen.
” Despite the hype , the 2020 app recapitulates many of the functions found on the 2016 app .
There ’ s a news feed with Trump ’ s social-media posts , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The “ gaming ” features that distinguished the 2016 app are still prominent—a “ Trump ’ s army ” member who accumulates a hundred thousand points by sharing contacts or raising money is promised a photograph with the President , while other members can use points to get discounts on MAGA gear .
Users are prompted to invite friends to download the app—more points !
—and can use the app to sign up to make calls on behalf of the campaign , to be a poll watcher , to register voters , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ events .
The most obvious new feature on the 2020 app is a live news broadcast , carefully curated by the campaign to push the President ’ s talking points .
It is hosted by a cast of campaign surrogates , including Lara Trump , Eric Trump ’ s wife , and Kimberly Guilfoyle , Donald Trump , Jr. , ’ s girlfriend and the campaign ’ s national finance chair .
There are also channels aimed at particular demographic groups , among them Women for Trump , Black Voices for Trump , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a crude approximation of a traditional news outlet , the Trump app enables users to stay fully sequestered within the fact-optional Trump universe .
“ I think everything we do is to counter the media , ” Parscale told Reuters in June .
“ This is another tool in the tool shed to fight that fight , and it ’ s a big tool.
” In May , after Twitter labelled one of Trump ’ s tweets as being in violation of its standards , sparking renewed claims of liberal-media censorship of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tweet was not taken down ) , downloads of the campaign app soared .
To access the Trump app , users must share their cell-phone numbers with the campaign .
“ The most important , golden thing in politics is a cellphone number , ” Parscale told Reuters .
“ When we receive cellphone numbers , it really allows us to identify them across the databases .
Who are they , voting history , everything.
” Michael Marinaccio , the chief operating officer of Data Trust , a private Republican data company , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new this year , or at least a sense of urgency , is getting as many cell-phone numbers as we can in the voter file data.
” An effective way to do that is to entice supporters to share not only their own cell-phone numbers with the campaign but those of their contacts as well .
One estimate , by Eliran Sapir , the C.E.O .
of Apptopia , a mobile-analytics company , is that 1.4 million app downloads could provide upward of a hundred million phone numbers .
This will enable the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who have not consented to handing over their personal information .
It ’ s not unlike how Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest the data of nearly ninety million unsuspecting Facebook users , only this time it is one ’ s friends , family , and acquaintances who are willfully handing over the data for a chance to get a twenty-five-dollar discount on a MAGA hat .
By contrast , the new Biden app still collects data on users , but it outlines the specific uses of that data and doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of users ’ friends and family .
“ Unlike the Biden app , which seeks to provide users with awareness and control of the specific uses of their data , the Trump app collects as much as it can using an opt-out system and makes no promises as to the specific uses of that data , ” Samuel Woolley , the director of the propaganda research project at the University of Texas ’ s Center for Media Engagement , told me .
“ They just try to get people to turn over as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told me , “ The Trump 2020 app was built by Phunware as a one-stop destination with a variety of tools to get voters engaged with President Trump ’ s reëlection campaign.
” Among its main contributions to the app ’ s data-mining capabilities is a “ location experience kit , ” which the company had previously marketed to hospitals and malls to help people navigate unfamiliar buildings .
Visitors could pair their phone ’ s Bluetooth with beacons set up throughout the facility .
Initially , the Trump 2020 app was built @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would have been useful .
According to one former employee , however , the company ’ s location software , which functions even when the app is not open , may be capable of sucking up more than geographic coördinates .
It could potentially “ sniff out all of the information you have on your phone .
Any sort of registration data , your name , your phone number , potentially your Social Security number , and other pieces of data .
It could sniff out how many apps you have on your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have on your phone , what apps you deleted recently , how much time you ’ ve spent in an app , and your dwell time at various specific locations .
It could give a very intimate picture of that individual and their relationship with that mobile device.
” ( Phunware did not respond to multiple requests for comment . )

Since the Trump campaign set up a shell company called American Made Media Consultants, in 2018, an entity it describes as a “vendor responsible for arranging and executing media buys and related services at fair market value,” it’s been nearly impossible to know whom the campaign is paying, for what, and how much. But, on May 27th, Alan Knitowski, the C.E.O. of Phunware, an Austin-based ad broker and software company, announced a “strategic relationship with American Made Media Consultants on the development, launch and ongoing management and evolution of the Trump-Pence 2020 Reelection Campaign’s mobile application portfolio.” Although Phunware never showed up in the campaign’s F.E.C. reports, Phunware’s S.E.C. filings show that, since last year, it has been paid around four million dollars by A.M.M.C.
On its face, Phunware seems like a strange choice to develop the campaign’s app. Before working for President Trump, Phunware’s software was being used in relatively few applications, the most popular being a horoscope app. And, since 2019, it has been embroiled in a lawsuit with Uber, a former client of the company’s ad-placement business. The dispute stems from a yearlong investigation by two former Phunware employees who discovered that the company was pretending to place Uber ads on Web sites like CNN when, in fact, they were appearing on pornography sites, among others, if they appeared at all. But, according to former Phunware employees and business associates, the company’s value to the Trump campaign is not in software development. “The Trump campaign is not paying Phunware four million dollars for an app,” a former business partner of the company told me. “They are paying for data. They are paying for targeted advertising services. Imagine if every time I open my phone I see a campaign message that Joe Biden’s America means we’re going to have war in the streets. That’s the service the Trump campaign and Brad Parscale”—the Trump campaign’s senior adviser for data and digital operations—“have bought from Phunware. An app is just part of the package.”
The Trump 2020 app is an enormous data-collection tool in its own right. When it launched, on April 23rd, Parscale, who was then Trump’s campaign manager, urged his followers on Facebook to “download the groundbreaking Official Trump 2020 App—unlike other lame political apps you’ve seen.” Despite the hype, the 2020 app recapitulates many of the functions found on the 2016 app. There’s a news feed with Trump’s social-media posts, an events calendar, and recorded videos. The “gaming” features that distinguished the 2016 app are still prominent—a “Trump’s army” member who accumulates a hundred thousand points by sharing contacts or raising money is promised a photograph with the President, while other members can use points to get discounts on MAGA gear. Users are prompted to invite friends to download the app—more points!—and can use the app to sign up to make calls on behalf of the campaign, to be a poll watcher, to register voters, and to get tickets to virtual and in-person events.
The most obvious new feature on the 2020 app is a live news broadcast, carefully curated by the campaign to push the President’s talking points. It is hosted by a cast of campaign surrogates, including Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump, Jr.,’s girlfriend and the campaign’s national finance chair. There are also channels aimed at particular demographic groups, among them Women for Trump, Black Voices for Trump, and Latinos for Trump. Though it is a crude approximation of a traditional news outlet, the Trump app enables users to stay fully sequestered within the fact-optional Trump universe. “I think everything we do is to counter the media,” Parscale told Reuters in June. “This is another tool in the tool shed to fight that fight, and it’s a big tool.” In May, after Twitter labelled one of Trump’s tweets as being in violation of its standards, sparking renewed claims of liberal-media censorship of conservatives (despite the fact that the tweet was not taken down), downloads of the campaign app soared.
To access the Trump app, users must share their cell-phone numbers with the campaign. “The most important, golden thing in politics is a cellphone number,” Parscale told Reuters. “When we receive cellphone numbers, it really allows us to identify them across the databases. Who are they, voting history, everything.” Michael Marinaccio, the chief operating officer of Data Trust, a private Republican data company, said recently that “what’s new this year, or at least a sense of urgency, is getting as many cell-phone numbers as we can in the voter file data.” An effective way to do that is to entice supporters to share not only their own cell-phone numbers with the campaign but those of their contacts as well. One estimate, by Eliran Sapir, the C.E.O. of Apptopia, a mobile-analytics company, is that 1.4 million app downloads could provide upward of a hundred million phone numbers. This will enable the Trump campaign to find and target people who have not consented to handing over their personal information. It’s not unlike how Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest the data of nearly ninety million unsuspecting Facebook users, only this time it is one’s friends, family, and acquaintances who are willfully handing over the data for a chance to get a twenty-five-dollar discount on a MAGA hat.
By contrast, the new Biden app still collects data on users, but it outlines the specific uses of that data and doesn’t automatically collect the e-mail and phone numbers of users’ friends and family. “Unlike the Biden app, which seeks to provide users with awareness and control of the specific uses of their data, the Trump app collects as much as it can using an opt-out system and makes no promises as to the specific uses of that data,” Samuel Woolley, the director of the propaganda research project at the University of Texas’s Center for Media Engagement, told me. “They just try to get people to turn over as much as possible.”
A Trump spokesperson told me, “The Trump 2020 app was built by Phunware as a one-stop destination with a variety of tools to get voters engaged with President Trump’s reëlection campaign.” Among its main contributions to the app’s data-mining capabilities is a “location experience kit,” which the company had previously marketed to hospitals and malls to help people navigate unfamiliar buildings. Visitors could pair their phone’s Bluetooth with beacons set up throughout the facility. Initially, the Trump 2020 app was built around big rallies, where this feature would have been useful. According to one former employee, however, the company’s location software, which functions even when the app is not open, may be capable of sucking up more than geographic coördinates. It could potentially “sniff out all of the information you have on your phone. Any sort of registration data, your name, your phone number, potentially your Social Security number, and other pieces of data. It could sniff out how many apps you have on your phone, what type of apps you have on your phone, what apps you deleted recently, how much time you’ve spent in an app, and your dwell time at various specific locations. It could give a very intimate picture of that individual and their relationship with that mobile device.” (Phunware did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
In 2017, as Phunware was moving into the election space, the company’s Web site announced, “As soon as the first few campaigns recognize the value of mobile ad targeting for voter engagement, the floodgates will open. Which campaign will get there first and strike it rich?” A year later, according to people familiar with the effort, the company used its location-tracking capabilities to create a lobbying campaign on behalf of a health-care company aiming to influence legislators in Georgia. It put a “geofence” around the governor’s mansion that recorded the I.D. of every device that went in and out of the building, and then used the I.D.s to send targeted messages to those phones (likely including the governor’s) about the legislation it was aiming to influence. The legislation passed. Phunware’s leadership has also discussed their ability to geofence polling places, according to people who were present during these discussions, in order to send targeted campaign ads to voters as they step into the voting booth. While it is illegal to advertise in the vicinity of the polls, using location data in this way to send targeted ads could enable a campaign to breach that border surreptitiously.
Phunware’s data collection on behalf of the Trump campaign likely extends beyond the app as well. According to Phunware’s chief operating officer, Randall Crowder, the company has created a “data exchange” that “enables digital marketers to design custom audiences within minutes using geographic, interest, intent, and demographic segments . . . high-quality G.P.S. location data points from one hundred million-plus devices in the United States to increase scale of location-based audiences.” In its promotional materials, the company also claims to have unique device I.D.s for more than a billion mobile devices worldwide, and to have developed what it calls a Knowledge Graph—a “consumer-centric collection of actions, preferences, characteristics and predicted behavior” from the data it has siphoned from mobile phones and tablets. Much like Facebook’s social graph, which has been described as “the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related,” this enables the company to quickly sort through large data sets, uncovering connections and relations that otherwise would be obscured. For example: middle-aged women who live alone, rarely vote, own guns, and live in a border state.
So how did Phunware obtain a billion unique device I.D.s? As the company described it to the S.E.C., they were collected from phones and tablets that use Phunware’s software. But, according to people who have worked with the company, in addition to the data it obtains through its software, Phunware has been using its ad-placement business as a wholesale data-mining operation. When it bids to place an ad in an app like, for example, Pandora, it scoops up the I.D. of every phone and tablet that would have been exposed to the ad, even if it loses the bid. By collecting and storing this information, the company is able to compile a fairly comprehensive picture of every app downloaded on those devices, and any registration data a user has shared in order to use the app.
This information can yield rich demographic data. If a campaign is looking for young men with an affinity for guns, for instance, it might look at who has downloaded both Call of Duty and CCW, the Concealed Carry Fifty State app. Then, using the location data associated with the device I.D., the data can be unmasked and linked to an individual. Once a campaign knows who someone is, and where a person lives, it is not difficult to start building a voter file, and using this information to tailor ads and messages.
Tom Wheeler, the former chair of the Federal Communications Commission, told me, “These are Cambridge Analytica-like techniques. It’s collecting the descriptive power of data from multiple sources, most of which the consumer doesn’t even know are being collected. And that’s what Cambridge Analytica did.”
In late July, a group of lawmakers, led by Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, and his Democratic colleague Ron Wyden, of Oregon, sent a letter to the chair of the Federal Trade Commission asking him to investigate whether using bidding information in this way constitutes an unfair and deceptive practice. “Few Americans realize that companies are siphoning off and sharing that ‘bidstream’ data to compile exhaustive dossiers about them,” they wrote, “which are then sold to hedge funds, political campaigns, and even to the government without court orders.” According to Charles Manning, the C.E.O. of Kochava, a data marketplace, “There are no regulatory bodies that appear to be aware of the technological foundations upon which digital advertising operates. This is a challenge, because without understanding how programmatic ads are bought and sold, regulators face an uphill battle in applying regulation that deals with opaque supply chains where fraudulent behavior can flourish.”
The Trump app, at least, is explicit about what it expects from its users: “You may be asked to provide certain information, including your name, username, password, e-mail, date of birth, gender, address, employment information, and other descriptive information,” the app’s privacy policy states. “The Services [of the app] may include features that rely on the use of information stored on, or made available through, your mobile Device. . . . We . . . reserve the right to store any information about the people you contact via the Services. . . . We reserve the right to use, share, exchange and/or disclose to DJTFP affiliated committee and third parties any of your information for any lawful purpose.” (When I asked Woolley why the campaign was asking supporters to share their contacts, since it already had access to them through the app’s permissions, he pointed out that, when a user shares their contacts to earn points, “that actually sends out messages to your contacts asking them to download the app. So rather than just getting data on your friends and family, they are able to also reach out to them using you as a reference.”)
The policy also notes that the campaign will be collecting information gleaned from G.P.S. and other location services, and that users will be tracked as they move around the Internet. Users also agree to give the campaign access to the phone’s Bluetooth connection, calendar, storage, and microphone, as well as permission to read the contents of their memory card, modify or delete the contents of the card, view the phone status and identity, view its Wi-Fi connections, and prevent the phone from going to sleep. These permissions give the Trump data operation access to the intimate details of users’ lives, the ability to listen in on those lives, and to follow users everywhere they go. It’s a colossal—and essentially free—data-mining enterprise. As Woolley and his colleague Jacob Gursky wrote in MIT Technology Review, the Trump 2020 app is “a voter surveillance tool of extraordinary power.”
I learned this firsthand after downloading the Trump 2020 app on a burner phone I bought in order to examine it, using an alias and a new e-mail address. Two days later, the President sent me a note, thanking me for joining his team. Lara Trump invited me (for a small donation) to become a Presidential adviser. Eric Trump called me one of his father’s “FIERCEST supporters from the beginning.” But the messages I began getting from the Trump campaign every couple of hours were sent not only to the name and address I’d used to access the app. They were also sent to the e-mail address and name associated with the credit card I’d used to buy the phone and its SIM card, neither of which I had shared with the campaign. Despite my best efforts, they knew who I was and where to reach me.
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-09-14--The New York City Schools That Didn’t Close

Fourteen per cent of residents in the Mott Haven neighborhood have tested positive for the coronavirus .
Yet the Mott Haven center , like the other R.E.C.s in the city , did not make any reports of “ a cluster or large amount of symptomatic cases , ” according to a D.O.E .
official .
( On-site nurses are tasked with reporting any symptomatic cases to the city ; Mott Haven ’ s protocol required any student or staff member who became symptomatic to stay home for seven days after the onset of symptoms , and permitted them to return @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without the aid of fever-reducing drugs , for three days . )
The success of the centers has assuaged some parents ’ fears about a full return to school .
( At Bronx Collaborative High School , whose principal , Brett Schneider , oversaw a center , seventy per cent of parents want to return to in-person learning . )
In August , while the U.F.T .
and principals were calling on the Mayor to delay the start of classes , a group of District Six principals urged the Mayor to turn every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ for children who can not stay safely at home.
” ( Asked for comment on this story , the U.F.T .
president , Michael Mulgrew , said in a statement that the centers , where thousands of U.F.T .
members volunteered to work , “ filled a tremendous need.
” ) Though returning to school is a project of a scale vastly larger than the one Taveras and other supervisors pulled off this summer , Goldmark says she has learned a lot about room capacity and building flow , lessons that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as more children return to school .
Goldmark talked to Department of Health officials every day , and kept fine-tuning the enrichment centers as new guidance arose .
She discovered the best way to begin the school year is to admit that she doesn ’ t have every answer yet .
“ We did not say upfront , ‘ We have figured everything out , ’ because we didn ’ t have time , and nobody knew anything , ” she said .
“ We said , ‘ You ’ re going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the questions.
’ Just having a way to take the question as it comes up , and answer it really quickly , and share that answer with everybody , is one of the best ways to develop policy when you ’ re in this setting , where you can ’ t anticipate everything .
If you wait until you anticipate everything to actually go , you ’ re not going to go.
” The regional enrichment centers shut down on September 11th , ten days before the school year was scheduled to begin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who need child care on their remote days can apply for one of a hundred thousand spots in a new , R.E.C.-like “ Learning Bridges ” program overseen by the D.O.E .
and other city agencies . )
By late August , the same parents who had cried during dropoff at the Mott Haven campus were leaving their kids at the door with a quick peck on the cheek , and Taveras was starting to take down the seven hundred photos that he ’ d hung in the hallways .
He hosted his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and he began saying goodbye to kids .
“ I got emotional , ” he said .
“ It ’ s hard because we ’ ve built a community .
It ’ s not , like , ‘ I ’ ll see you next year.
’ I ’ m not going to see these babies anymore.
” More on the Coronavirus • To protect American lives and revive the economy , Donald Trump and Jared Kushner should listen to Anthony Fauci rather than trash him .
• We should look to students to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not too late to ask what they really want .
• A pregnant pediatrician on what children need during the crisis .
• Trump is helping tycoons who have donated to his reëlection campaign exploit the pandemic to maximize profits .
• Meet the high-finance mogul in charge of our economic recovery .
• The coronavirus is likely to reshape architecture .
What kinds of space are we willing to live and work in now ?

By the second week of March, many parents, teachers, and elected officials were asking Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the city’s public schools. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo had confirmed the city’s first coronavirus case on March 1st. School attendance had plummeted. Three dozen infectious-disease experts signed a letter, delivered March 12th, urging the Mayor to act. But de Blasio resisted. New York’s schools, he said, were “interrelated deeply” with its health-care and mass-transit systems. Leaders of 1199 S.E.I.U., the city’s largest union for health-care workers, had urged the Mayor to recognize that closing schools would leave many of them with no one to care for their children.
“We are worried about a cascading effect,” de Blasio told MSNBC’s Joy Reid, on March 14th. “You’re not going to have a functioning health-care system if the folks in the medical field, the doctors, the nurses, the techs, everyone has to stay home with their kids.” De Blasio told Reid that he was “trying to hold a line,” but, behind the scenes, a group of education administrators had begun acknowledging what would become a months-long debate. For some students, school is the only place where they can eat a warm meal or access medical care. Schools provide clothes and psychological support. For hundreds of thousands of families, they provide child care that is otherwise unaffordable. And back in March, even for families who could afford it, there seemed to be little child care available at all.
“It started to register,” Karin Goldmark, the deputy chancellor for school planning and development, said. “We are going to have to do something so that people can still go to work, so that they can save the lives of New Yorkers.”
Goldmark, an administrator who normally manages the department’s building utilization—“Basically, I do for space what the C.F.O. does for money”—agreed to take the lead in creating a network of emergency child-care centers. On the afternoon of Friday the 13th, she started brainstorming with the help of other D.O.E. departments. By Monday morning, New York city schools were closed, and Goldmark had a plan.
Karin Goldmark, New York City’s deputy chancellor for school planning and development.
She’d spent the weekend calling the health-care-workers’ union to find out where their members lived. When the union sent her a list of popular Zip Codes, she started casting for buildings in those neighborhoods. During a regular year, students attend classes in a wide array of structures. Some have high ceilings and windows that open, but others contain narrow hallways and broken H.V.A.C. systems. Goldmark began her search with a detailed checklist. She wanted A.D.A.-accessible spots with a mixture of indoor and outdoor space, and she preferred large, new buildings, like the ones at the Mott Haven campus. The centers planned to serve three hot meals a day, so Goldmark searched for schools with big kitchens, places wide enough for cafeteria workers to stand far apart from one another.
The department initially limited enrollment to children whose parents were health-care workers, transit employees, or emergency responders. They allowed some Sanitation Department staff to apply, but, even with those caps, Goldmark knew that she’d need at least five thousand Department of Education employees to volunteer at emergency centers with no promise of additional pay. Most of the city’s seventy-five thousand instructors would be working from home, teaching their students remotely, so Goldmark assembled a motley crew of high-school principals, paraprofessionals, and social workers. Midlevel administrators like Taveras volunteered, and Ursulina Ramirez, the department’s chief operating officer, agreed to run a center in Queens temporarily, after the original appointee fell sick just before it opened.
A few hours before the centers opened, Goldmark was still assembling her team. At 10 P.M. Sunday, a school official called Juliette Giorgio, a retired teacher and social worker who had spent thirty-three years in the department, to ask if she could be at P.S. 128, in Queens, by seven o’clock the next day. Giorgio retired last year to take care of her mother, who has Parkinson’s and dementia, but she didn’t hesitate that night. She arranged for a home health aide to stay with her mother and reported to the Queens center the next morning.
“There’s a lot going on now about fear,” Goldmark said, alluding to the ongoing debate about how to reopen all of New York City’s public schools safely, which recently resulted in de Blasio, under pressure from the United Federation of Teachers, delaying the first day of in-person instruction to September 21st. “But people stepped forward in that moment. It was people who were willing to put themselves at risk in order to serve the city. They were just, like, ‘People need us, so we’re here.’ ”


newyorker--2020-09-14--Goya and the Art of Survival

Goya and the Art of Survival

A good time for thinking about Francisco Goya is while the world stumbles .
Crisis becomes him .
“ Goya : A Portrait of the Artist ” ( Princeton ) , a biography by the American art historian Janis A. Tomlinson , affords me a newly informed chance to reflect on an artist of enigmatic mind and permanent significance .
In the tumultuous Spain of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries , Goya worked for three kings—the reformist Carlos III , the dithering Carlos IV , and the reactionary Ferdinand VII—and then for social circles of the French usurper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constitutional government ; and , finally , woe to the land , for Ferdinand VII again .
Goya kept landing on his feet as cohorts of his friends and patrons toppled from official favor , or worse .
His increasingly naturalistic portraits—vivid in characterization and unconventionally flattering , with all but breathable tones and tints in dusky chiaroscuro ignited at times by clarion hues—sustained him at court despite the intrigues of rivals and schemers .
It could be argued that the deafness that befell him in 1793 ( possibly from lead poisoning ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ continued until his death , at eighty-two , in 1828 , provided him some diplomatic padding , as he managed his interests with politic correspondence and the support of well-situated admirers .
He was firmly prestigious by the time he took to making works of lacerating wit and escalating , ultimately horrific intensity .
A stormy petrel skimming waves of change that swamped others , he introduced to history a model of the star artist as an anomalous spirit equipped with social acumen and licensed by genius .
His nearest avatar is Andy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accounts of the Spanish court are no Iberian “ Wolf Hall , ” but they feature arresting characters , such as the raffish antihero Manuel de Godoy .
A twenty-four-year-old military officer when he was elevated by Carlos IV , in 1791 , Godoy came to manage Spain ’ s crazily shifting alliances in a war with Revolutionary France and , when that went badly , one in league with France against Portugal , with Godoy promised a personal stake in the spoils .
Big mistake .
In 1808 , Napoleon occupied Spain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and discarded Godoy , who barely escaped the wrath of his betrayed fellow-citizens .
( They made do with destroying nearly every available trace of him , such as portraits by Goya . )
Rumored to be the lover of Carlos IV ’ s queen , María Luisa , Godoy may have commissioned , or at least incited , Goya to paint his only erotic nude , “ The Naked Maja ” ( 1797-1800 ) .
( Majas and their male equivalent , majos , were flamboyantly cheeky lower-class dandies . )
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and its clothed counterpart in 1813 and posed stern questions to Goya , which he seems to have successfully ignored .
There can be a lucky charm , during treacherous times , in being really , really good at something .
Imperilled after the Bourbon restoration of 1814 by a purge of collaborators with the French regime , Goya redeemed a painting that he had made of Joseph I by substituting , or having someone else do so , the face of Ferdinand VII .
He was cleared .
The country ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s gifts , and arrivistes clamored to be portrayed by him .
Tomlinson addresses , with refreshing clarity , a chronic question of just how independent , not to say subversive , Goya was of the powers that employed him .
She debunks a common oversimplification of Goya as a committed post-Enlightenment liberal .
He was more complicated than that , and ineluctably strange .
Uncanniness had to be part of his magnetism .
There ’ s often something haunted or haunting in his portraits and in some of his religious and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ antic cartoons of Spanish life that were destined for tapestries , an irksome duty of his early career .
It ’ s as if he always had something up his sleeve .
That impression affected me strongly on a visit to the Museo del Prado , in Madrid , last year .
Looking at his works can rouse the sensation of an alarm going off nearby , but you can neither understand the reason for its activation nor find it to turn it off .
Goya didn ’ t emerge as a master @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He can seem at once decadent and innovative , with some lingering tropes of the late Baroque and the rococo and the brassiness of the then fashionable neoclassicism along with utterly original freshets of Romanticism .
Spanish art had become provincial .
The country ’ s leading art educator was the mediocre German painter Anton Raphael Mengs , who promulgated a sort of housebroken neoclassicism .
In 1778 , when Goya was thirty-two , he turned to Spain ’ s own lapsed glories , with a set of etched copies of seventeenth-century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the painterly demiurge in incised line with washes of aquatint .
The hair-shirt exercise puzzled some of his fellow-artists .
The renderings are spot on , but their reductions of color to line and shading are like a broadcast of the “ Hallelujah ” Chorus over a kid ’ s walkie-talkie .
I think that Goya sought gains for painting through grasping what had been lost to it .
No longer equal to illusions of reality , paintings were fated to become objects , real in themselves , of a certain kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Goya practiced a temperamental abnegation of anything usual .
This kept—and keeps—him impossible to pin down : a deserter from the marching ranks of the Old Masters , forever on the loose .
An homage to Velázquez ’ s touchstone “ Las Meninas ” ( 1656 ) figures in perhaps the most beautiful group portrait ever painted .
“ The Family of Carlos IV ” ( 1800-01 ) stands out in Goya ’ s portraiture as a one-off masterpiece on purpose , affirming for good the justice of his recent elevation to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ background , the artist gazes out from behind , it would appear , the very canvas that we behold , suggesting that he ’ s working from a mirrored view of the scene—an unlikely conceit that seems meant mainly , and wittily , to recall Velázquez ’ s similar self-portrayal in “ Las Meninas.
” ( The jape amounts to a proto-modernist instance of art about art . )
Thirteen lavishly clad persons , from the fifty-two-year-old monarch to a babe in arms , share a room awash in the softly shadowed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They assume informal attitudes of everyday aplomb , except for a woman who looks away as if distracted in the pictured instant .
She represents a princess of Naples who was the bride-to-be of Carlos IV ’ s son Ferdinand VII ; her looks weren ’ t yet known in Spain .
She faces a muddy painting , on the room ’ s back wall , that made reference to Sodom and Gomorrah .
Some modern commentary detects , in her Lot ’ s-wife posture , a critical stab at the corruption of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the time could have noticed it .
And doesn ’ t Carlos IV look clownish ?
Your call .
The more germane point is that he looks like—because he is—the King .
The tacit sensibilities of a given era tend to elude subsequent generations .
I suspect that Goya ’ s sophisticated contemporaries found his occasional mischief chic .
Tomlinson writes that to assign personal perspectives to Goya ’ s work for the court “ is to impose values that are not of his time ” —a familiar defense of historical figures who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but apt , as well , for an ill-fitting halo .
When we presume agreement with Goya ’ s supposed politics , we drift afield of his extraordinary complexity .
What it was like to be him crouches behind an ineffaceable question mark .

A good time for thinking about Francisco Goya is while the world stumbles. Crisis becomes him. “Goya: A Portrait of the Artist” (Princeton), a biography by the American art historian Janis A. Tomlinson, affords me a newly informed chance to reflect on an artist of enigmatic mind and permanent significance. In the tumultuous Spain of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Goya worked for three kings—the reformist Carlos III, the dithering Carlos IV, and the reactionary Ferdinand VII—and then for social circles of the French usurper Joseph Bonaparte; for an overoptimistic three-year constitutional government; and, finally, woe to the land, for Ferdinand VII again. Goya kept landing on his feet as cohorts of his friends and patrons toppled from official favor, or worse. His increasingly naturalistic portraits—vivid in characterization and unconventionally flattering, with all but breathable tones and tints in dusky chiaroscuro ignited at times by clarion hues—sustained him at court despite the intrigues of rivals and schemers. It could be argued that the deafness that befell him in 1793 (possibly from lead poisoning), when he was forty-seven, and continued until his death, at eighty-two, in 1828, provided him some diplomatic padding, as he managed his interests with politic correspondence and the support of well-situated admirers. He was firmly prestigious by the time he took to making works of lacerating wit and escalating, ultimately horrific intensity. A stormy petrel skimming waves of change that swamped others, he introduced to history a model of the star artist as an anomalous spirit equipped with social acumen and licensed by genius. His nearest avatar is Andy Warhol.
Tomlinson’s dryly written accounts of the Spanish court are no Iberian “Wolf Hall,” but they feature arresting characters, such as the raffish antihero Manuel de Godoy. A twenty-four-year-old military officer when he was elevated by Carlos IV, in 1791, Godoy came to manage Spain’s crazily shifting alliances in a war with Revolutionary France and, when that went badly, one in league with France against Portugal, with Godoy promised a personal stake in the spoils. Big mistake. In 1808, Napoleon occupied Spain, made his brother the King, and discarded Godoy, who barely escaped the wrath of his betrayed fellow-citizens. (They made do with destroying nearly every available trace of him, such as portraits by Goya.) Rumored to be the lover of Carlos IV’s queen, María Luisa, Godoy may have commissioned, or at least incited, Goya to paint his only erotic nude, “The Naked Maja” (1797-1800). (Majas and their male equivalent, majos, were flamboyantly cheeky lower-class dandies.) The Inquisition impounded “The Naked Maja” and its clothed counterpart in 1813 and posed stern questions to Goya, which he seems to have successfully ignored. There can be a lucky charm, during treacherous times, in being really, really good at something. Imperilled after the Bourbon restoration of 1814 by a purge of collaborators with the French regime, Goya redeemed a painting that he had made of Joseph I by substituting, or having someone else do so, the face of Ferdinand VII. He was cleared. The country’s cultural establishment couldn’t spare Goya’s gifts, and arrivistes clamored to be portrayed by him.
Tomlinson addresses, with refreshing clarity, a chronic question of just how independent, not to say subversive, Goya was of the powers that employed him. She debunks a common oversimplification of Goya as a committed post-Enlightenment liberal. He was more complicated than that, and ineluctably strange. Uncanniness had to be part of his magnetism. There’s often something haunted or haunting in his portraits and in some of his religious and allegorical commissions, though not in the antic cartoons of Spanish life that were destined for tapestries, an irksome duty of his early career. It’s as if he always had something up his sleeve. That impression affected me strongly on a visit to the Museo del Prado, in Madrid, last year. Looking at his works can rouse the sensation of an alarm going off nearby, but you can neither understand the reason for its activation nor find it to turn it off.
“Love and Death,” from the series “Los Caprichos,” from 1799.
Goya didn’t emerge as a master through a neat evolution of period styles. He can seem at once decadent and innovative, with some lingering tropes of the late Baroque and the rococo and the brassiness of the then fashionable neoclassicism along with utterly original freshets of Romanticism. Spanish art had become provincial. The country’s leading art educator was the mediocre German painter Anton Raphael Mengs, who promulgated a sort of housebroken neoclassicism. In 1778, when Goya was thirty-two, he turned to Spain’s own lapsed glories, with a set of etched copies of seventeenth-century masterpieces by Velázquez, skeletonizing the art of the painterly demiurge in incised line with washes of aquatint. The hair-shirt exercise puzzled some of his fellow-artists. The renderings are spot on, but their reductions of color to line and shading are like a broadcast of the “Hallelujah” Chorus over a kid’s walkie-talkie. I think that Goya sought gains for painting through grasping what had been lost to it. No longer equal to illusions of reality, paintings were fated to become objects, real in themselves, of a certain kind. Rather than forge a signature style, Goya practiced a temperamental abnegation of anything usual. This kept—and keeps—him impossible to pin down: a deserter from the marching ranks of the Old Masters, forever on the loose.
An homage to Velázquez’s touchstone “Las Meninas” (1656) figures in perhaps the most beautiful group portrait ever painted. “The Family of Carlos IV” (1800-01) stands out in Goya’s portraiture as a one-off masterpiece on purpose, affirming for good the justice of his recent elevation to the first court painter. In the background, the artist gazes out from behind, it would appear, the very canvas that we behold, suggesting that he’s working from a mirrored view of the scene—an unlikely conceit that seems meant mainly, and wittily, to recall Velázquez’s similar self-portrayal in “Las Meninas.” (The jape amounts to a proto-modernist instance of art about art.) Thirteen lavishly clad persons, from the fifty-two-year-old monarch to a babe in arms, share a room awash in the softly shadowed, caressing light of a golden afternoon. They assume informal attitudes of everyday aplomb, except for a woman who looks away as if distracted in the pictured instant. She represents a princess of Naples who was the bride-to-be of Carlos IV’s son Ferdinand VII; her looks weren’t yet known in Spain. She faces a muddy painting, on the room’s back wall, that made reference to Sodom and Gomorrah. Some modern commentary detects, in her Lot’s-wife posture, a critical stab at the corruption of the monarchic state—as if no one at the time could have noticed it. And doesn’t Carlos IV look clownish? Your call. The more germane point is that he looks like—because he is—the King.
The tacit sensibilities of a given era tend to elude subsequent generations. I suspect that Goya’s sophisticated contemporaries found his occasional mischief chic. Tomlinson writes that to assign personal perspectives to Goya’s work for the court “is to impose values that are not of his time”—a familiar defense of historical figures who are judged harshly by present-day standards, but apt, as well, for an ill-fitting halo. When we presume agreement with Goya’s supposed politics, we drift afield of his extraordinary complexity. What it was like to be him crouches behind an ineffaceable question mark.
The lower-middle-class son of a gilder, Goya studied painting in his beloved home town of Zaragoza, northeast of Madrid. When he was twenty-three, he went to Italy and spent two knockabout years of which little is known. (But he won second prize in a competition in Parma for a painting of Hannibal crossing the Alps.) In 1773, he married María Josefa Bayeu, a sister of his elder Zaragozan Francisco Bayeu, who was then a court painter to Carlos III. Among several miscarriages, Goya and Josefa had seven children, only one of whom survived childhood. Does that concatenation of tragedies help explain the radical pessimism of Goya’s later works—most shocking, the eighty-two engravings assembled as “The Disasters of War” (1810-20), which he made in reaction to the Peninsular War of Bourbon Spain, Portugal, and guerrilla bands, backed by Great Britain, against the French occupation? Other psychic scars may be adduced: Goya’s witnessing of public executions by garrote and, in the case of a woman whose face he remembered and drew decades later, a burning at the stake. And sights of inmates from Zaragoza’s mental asylum stayed with him. But any traumas hung fire as he launched himself on a professional career with seething ambition, adapting Bayeu’s rococo manner, but with a faster, more spontaneous hand.
In 1772, for his first major commission, Goya frescoed a dome in the immense, new Zaragoza basilica of El Pilar. His drawings for the design displeased the local cognoscenti, leading to a suggestion that Bayeu should touch them up in the correct fashion. Having made grudging modifications, Goya completed the project on his own, but he was summarily dismissed from further work at El Pilar. The affront initiated five years of bad blood between the brothers-in-law. (Tomlinson reports that today a visitor to El Pilar can behold the Goya ceiling in full illumination, while a nearby one by Bayeu hovers in gloom.) The humiliation, staining Goya’s reputation in his home town, nettled him for most of his life, even after Zaragoza was obliged to embrace him as an illustrious native son. Nothing like it happened again.
“What did you expect from a budget airline?” Cartoon by Sofia Warren Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
What most dramatically did happen, starting in 1793 with the small paintings on tin that he made (and found a market for) of what Tomlinson summarizes as “natural disasters, cannibals, madhouses, and murder,” was the emergence of a blistering negativity. The works coincided with spells of freely admitted anxiety and depression—“at times raving in a mood that I myself cannot stand,” Goya wrote to a friend—but there’s nothing deranged about the paintings. Strongly styled, they process rather than express his disturbances: correlatives set outside himself. They were followed, in 1797, by the start of a series of eighty satirical engravings of Spanish life, “Los Caprichos,” which proved widely popular. (Carlos IV acquired a set in return for granting Goya’s son a pension.) He spared no class—O.K., except the titled—in his burlesques of donkey-headed professionals, superstitious peasantry, female and male poseurs, hypocritical clerics, and fools who, perhaps because so lost in delusion, verge on transmogrifying out of human form. In a rare public statement, advertising the series, Goya coolly declared as his targets “the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual.” Note the fatalism in that “any civilized society.” If buyers of the works fancied themselves superior to the characters depicted, Goya surely didn’t mind; but you know he had his doubts.
No public welcome could be counted on for the “Disasters of War,” which weren’t published until thirty-five years after Goya’s death. He shared them privately, giving a set of proofs to a friend who inscribed it, laconically, “Fatal consequences of Spain’s bloody war with Bonaparte, and other emphatic caprices.” Understatement! Murder and dismemberment, rape, desecration of corpses, and ghastly tortures multiply. It is natural to assume outrage in the author of visions so terrible. But what freezes my blood is an equanimity that sublimates rage and sorrow at what people can—and will—do to other people when civilization’s thin crust fissures.
Visiting war zones around Madrid, Goya witnessed scenes of the carnage; and he was present for the catastrophe, in 1811, of a famine that filled the city with desperate, diseased, and dying refugees from the despoiled countryside. History is replete with war and starvation, but nothing else in art before or since—including, to my mind, photography and film—compares with the “Disasters” for penetrating hurt. The pictures are something more, less, and other than what we think of as protest art. Working up his nightmare scenarios stroke by stroke, as if from the inside out, he vivifies both the suffering of cruelty and the delirium of inflicting it, without any allowance for a rote response. Nor did he affix blame. One of his sardonically bland captions, “Rightly or wrongly,” withholds the verdict on a scene of soldiers about to kill two blade-wielding men who, for all we know, may be patriotic guerrillas or mere criminals. Other captions—“There is no one to help them”; “What more is there to do?”—visit contempt on the impotence of the uninvolved. The same petrifying dreadfulness marks those intermittent engravings which impute monstrousness—embodied by eruptive owls or witches—to the dreaming states of the putatively rational. Goya doesn’t indict the evils of individuals and groups; he amasses evidence of universal depravity. He added to the series compulsively, using battered, pitted, or otherwise flawed copper plates to etch when good ones fell subject to wartime scarcity. The sublimity of his skill occasions no relief, but, rather, the opposite. The last turn of the screw is your aesthetic delectation.
Goya had been on hand for the French invasion, which, in 1814, informed two astounding paintings of an uprising fomented by the dethroned Ferdinand VII, “The Third of May 1808” and “The Second of May 1808.” I cite the second date first because the image, a massacre of Spanish citizens by a French firing squad, is so routinely regarded as an antiwar icon on a par with “Guernica.” Its central figure, arms raised in hopeless supplication, feels at once a bit Christlike and a lot like a guy who is appalled to find himself in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time. Now consider “The Second of May,” a street scene of citizens frenziedly assaulting French forces. Their targets prominently include Mamluk cavalry from Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. Possibly Muslim, do those figures touch a nerve of Spain’s expulsion of its Moors two centuries earlier? (Fanatic religious intolerance had been one factor in the nation’s decline from a cosmopolitan empire to a chew toy for armies.) We can’t know what Goya had in mind for the picture, other than commonplace lunacy. But it wasn’t propaganda.
“Duel with Cudgels,” from 1820-23.
Goya seems to have been a good enough man who led a decorous enough life, though hot-tempered in such practical matters as being paid for his work—reasonably, considering his early memories of poverty and his obligation to support members of an extended family after the death of his intestate father, in 1781. There’s a lingering suspicion of homosexuality regarding his primary and, perhaps, only close friend, a never-married Zaragoza businessman named Martín Zapater. When apart, they corresponded constantly and longed for each other’s company. But Zapater fell silent when Goya became hysterical during a case of smallpox in his remaining heir, Javier, and pelted his friend—“oh my soulmate”—with letters of hyperbolic devotion. (Javier survived, and Goya simmered down.) So there was a limit, though a porous one. The pair revelled in bawdry and exchanged drawings of male and female genitalia. Tomlinson discounts a sexual liaison on the ground that the men were too discreet to risk the possible scandal. But she confirms that the darkest turn in Goya’s emotional life coincided not with his deafness or any other recorded misfortune but with Zapater’s untimely death in 1803. The open-heartedness (exceedingly rare for Goya) in portraits that he made of his friend, which radiate mutual affection and trust, plunges me half into love with the sitter myself. For the record, I doubt a sexual relation, for want of more than speculative evidence. In Goya’s one later painting that bespeaks male intimacy, “Self-Portrait with Dr. Arrieta” (1820), we see the artist, drastically enfeebled, being attended to by a doctor who is almost comically virile, competent, and concerned. It’s a picture to make you smile through tears.
We come at last to the Black Paintings (untitled by Goya), of which Tomlinson gives a bracingly investigative account: fourteen pictures that Goya painted in oils on the plaster walls of the house in Spain where he lived from 1819 to 1824, before a sojourn in France and his final four years among Spanish exiles in Bordeaux. (His expatriation was elective. He could—and twice did—revisit Spain.) The works vary in size and format, from panel to panorama. Though effectively installed in an oblong room at the Prado, they arouse a retroactive ache to have seen them in situ before they were transferred to canvas, in the nineteenth century, and, judging from early photographs, in some cases coarsened by clumsy restoration.
There’s no getting used to the jolts of a darkling procession of the immiserated and the insane: a crazed giant (traditionally assumed to be Saturn, but who knows?) devouring a human body; two men buried to their knees in a barren landscape and fighting to the death with cudgels; witches and a goat-headed demon in sinister excelsis; a little dog about to perish in what looks to be a tide of shit. Tomlinson surmises that an oddly ladylike giantess is Goya’s maid and companion, Leocadia Weiss, whom he met after the death of his wife, in 1812. That image was situated next to the front door of the house, welcoming visitors to a peculiar scheme of interior decoration.
How do we square the courtier artist with the tour guide to Hell? It may be easier than it seems. For starters, what if the Black Paintings are in the nature of a joke? Tomlinson cites the possible influence of contemporaneous horror-mongering entertainments by showmen. And do the grotesqueries fundamentally contradict Goya’s prior imaginative process? (I had thought, before my most recent visit to them, that I must be inured to those paintings. But no. Still and again, I cowered.) Mere squeamishness may impede thought on the question. Relative snowflakes that we are today, we can start by adjusting to the thicker skins of the culture that shaped Goya. Think of the cult of the bullfight, which he adored and immortalized in sensationally informative, visceral engravings and technically innovative lithographs that beggar Picasso’s superficial homages a century and a half later. Goya was an avid hunter, once apologizing for having missed one shot of nineteen that had brought down two hares, a rabbit, five partridges, and ten quail. Tomlinson hazards that, for a social climber, hunting with aristocrats was that era’s version of golfing with C.E.O.s. She admirably keeps the mysteries of Goya’s character distinct from its self-serving machinations. He was unremarkably bourgeois, though salaried by royalty. (Payments kept arriving until the end of his life.) The boring parts of his story are salutary, framing the discontinuous dramas.
Goya’s relationship with Weiss seems to have been tempestuous, but he was enchanted by her daughter, Rosario, whom he deemed, from the age of eleven, an artistic prodigy and promoted to everyone he knew. He had no other follower in art—unless you count, indirectly, most artists since. With a knack for miniaturist portraits, Rosario set an example for Goya that he took up and, of course, surpassed, with virtuosic miniatures of his own. Competitiveness consumed him. (Rosario went on to a meagre career as a copyist of paintings and was not above the odd forgery.) Ruling him, too, was humor, if that’s the right word for sabotaging anyone’s presumption to know his mind. I’ve compared the effect of the Black Paintings to unfriendly laughter coming out of a well. Don’t kid yourself that he cares about connecting with you. But the works test, in the depths of the incommunicable, the degree of anyone’s courage to envisage the bad in life, the worse, and the almost inconceivably abysmal. Whether he was driven by perversity or by obsession, there’s an unholy glee about what Goya watched himself doing in and to his domestic haven. That’s what keeps us returning to the works, as sorry as we may feel, yet again, to have come. One thing’s for sure: the series marks no mental disintegration. Goya worked at top form, though reduced output, after moving to Bordeaux.
I believe that the Black Paintings distill, to a hundred proof, Goya’s singularity. You can perceive tinctures of it in his best portraits, which register personhoods—specific existences—with curious dispassion. They attract obliquely. That’s their eeriness. Be the sitter the Duke of Wellington (posing at stately ease while looking a bit tired, after his triumphal entry into Madrid, in 1812) or a gussied-up little boy (Goya was great with children, savoring their innocence of their preassigned social status), you sense him, when done, gathering his brushes and going home. Something has happened—the live capture of a personality, if not a soul—but it was engendered by a job, not by a divination. The quality of a remote regard, transposed from reality to fantasy, extends to even the most bizarre or tragic of his satirical subjects. No other artist possesses such a capacity to feel and to not feel, at a go. The Black Paintings simply—simple for him!—polarize torridity and iciness at simultaneous extremes that we would otherwise not suspect possible. Goya’s cynosure is detachment regardless of the degree of pressure, professional or psychological, he may have been under. He leaves his subjects alone, as he was alone, and he leaves us alone with them. Rarely consummate in the ways that we associate with great art—Goya cranked out lots of so-so pictures—he is an outlier’s outlier in the canon. His legacy isn’t a commanding body of work but a homing beacon for worried people in worlds that are subject to unpredictable changes, perhaps suddenly and soon. Goya knew the problem and let slip the solution, which is to keep in mind that there is no solution, only an immemorial question: Now what? ♦


newyorker--2020-09-14--“Rauschenberg,” by Maya Phillips

“Rauschenberg,” by Maya Phillips

Our first concern might be did the artist consider the impossibility of defining nothing without speaking of absence without speaking The white paint of the artist carefully selected and applied so as to seem an uncreased space unwrinkled unnippled a whatever indefinite nondescript discreet But even without a mouth without figure or form or face the canvas if it were to speak as we the viewers imagine would it not speak of powdered sugar and cocaine , chalk , marshmallows , and salt and even that a betrayal of substance Would it not privately murmur something about the white simmer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something not nothing would it not Perhaps here then is the problem of the art not the art but the reflection the world cut in a pane of glass or rather being as it is latex paint on canvas Here the artist invites questions from the audience The girl in back who asks if this is the moment before being The man with glasses who asks if this is a room called grief The boy who asks waveringly if this is his fear if this is his sleeping in a dreamless night The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problem to consider for the art to know time like any other , ordinary thing and we may ask of the knowing can we wear it on our wrists can it pulse with the seconds One more question from the crowd Can the artist perhaps tell us something of the future And here the artist politely demurs Thank you and good night everyone may exit to the left And when the gift shop is closed we ’ re saddened to leave empty-handed but consider it a comfort the pressure we feel when we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dream of a bounty of images every color at once The artist dreams of something like god but completely the opposite

Audio: Read by the author.
Our first concern might be did the artist consider the impossibility of defining
nothing without speaking of absence without speaking
The white paint of the artist carefully selected and applied so as to seem
an uncreased space unwrinkled unnippled a whatever indefinite nondescript discreet
But even without a mouth without figure or form or face the canvas if it were to speak
as we the viewers imagine would it not speak of powdered sugar and cocaine,
chalk, marshmallows, and salt
and even that a betrayal of substance
Would it not privately murmur something about the white simmer of stars
Would it not speak of something not nothing would it not
Perhaps here then is the problem
of the art not the art but the reflection the world cut in a pane of glass
or rather being as it is latex paint on canvas
Here the artist invites questions from the audience
The girl in back who asks if this is the moment before being
The man with glasses who asks if this is a room called grief
The boy who asks waveringly if this is his fear if this is his sleeping
in a dreamless night
The artist calls them clocks and here another problem to consider
for the art to know time like any other, ordinary thing and we may ask
of the knowing can we wear it on our wrists can it pulse with the seconds
One more question from the crowd
Can the artist perhaps tell us something of the future
And here the artist politely demurs
Thank you and good night everyone may exit to the left
And when the gift shop is closed we’re saddened to leave empty-handed
but consider it a comfort the pressure
we feel when we press our palms together
That night we dream of a bounty of images every color at once
The artist dreams of something like god but completely the opposite


newyorker--2020-09-14--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Wandering in Strange Lands , by Morgan Jerkins ( Harper ) .
The author ’ s ancestors were part of the Great Migration , the exodus of six million African-Americans from the rural South to Northern and Western cities .
Growing up in New Jersey , she felt frustratingly detached from her Southern roots .
In a book that is at once a family history , an ethnography , and a detective story , she follows clues about her lineage across the county .
The people she meets—Gullah Geechee , Louisiana Creoles , Black “ freedmen ” fighting for recognition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her to embrace the intricacies of her own identity .
For Jerkins , this “ journey in reverse ” has a dual purpose : “ to excavate the connective tissue that complicates but unites us as a people , and to piece together the story of how I came to be.
” The Pink Line , by Mark Gevisser ( Farrar , Straus & Giroux ) .
In 2010 , after Tiwonge Chimbalanga was jailed for becoming engaged to a man , she fled Malawi for South Africa .
Chimbalanga , who is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but her case was treated as a gay marriage by progressive activists and reactionary prosecutors alike .
This book argues that , in seeking safety in another country , she crossed a “ pink line ” : a physical , legal , rhetorical , or moral frontier between oppression and tolerance .
Through a series of personal narratives—lesbians seeking parental rights in Mexico , a third-gender community in Kerala—Gevisser explores how globalization , the Internet , and international development have brought clashing ideals of gender and sexuality into new configurations .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rijneveld , translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison ( Graywolf ) .
The narrator of this novel , the winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize , is the daughter of religious farmers in Holland .
Surrounded by death—a drowned brother , the culling of diseased cows that she loves , suicidal threats from her mother—she makes a series of “ sacrifices ” to try to keep her family , and her own body , from changing .
Her parents have banned Google and TV , believing them evil , but their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she fills with her own fantastic speculations : if she takes her coat off , she will sicken .
In matter-of-fact prose , the banalities and horrors blend as she longs for a rescuer .
High as the Waters Rise , by Anja Kampmann , translated from the German by Anne Posten ( Catapult ) .
This first novel by an established poet examines the marginalized lives of European laborers .
An oil-rig worker , traumatized after a friend disappears at sea , embarks on a journey of self-discovery—to old haunts in Malta @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to his friend ’ s home town , in Hungary .
Along the way , he encounters old and new friends and lovers , who often share his sense of being left behind in the wake of supposed progress .
Although Kampmann addresses current events , such as environmental degradation and the precariousness of modern Europe , her focus is on how ideas of masculinity affect one man ’ s ability to grieve .

Wandering in Strange Lands, by Morgan Jerkins (Harper). The author’s ancestors were part of the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African-Americans from the rural South to Northern and Western cities. Growing up in New Jersey, she felt frustratingly detached from her Southern roots. In a book that is at once a family history, an ethnography, and a detective story, she follows clues about her lineage across the county. The people she meets—Gullah Geechee, Louisiana Creoles, Black “freedmen” fighting for recognition in the Cherokee Nation—resist categorization and help her to embrace the intricacies of her own identity. For Jerkins, this “journey in reverse” has a dual purpose: “to excavate the connective tissue that complicates but unites us as a people, and to piece together the story of how I came to be.”
The Pink Line, by Mark Gevisser (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). In 2010, after Tiwonge Chimbalanga was jailed for becoming engaged to a man, she fled Malawi for South Africa. Chimbalanga, who is transgender, was accepted in her village, but her case was treated as a gay marriage by progressive activists and reactionary prosecutors alike. This book argues that, in seeking safety in another country, she crossed a “pink line”: a physical, legal, rhetorical, or moral frontier between oppression and tolerance. Through a series of personal narratives—lesbians seeking parental rights in Mexico, a third-gender community in Kerala—Gevisser explores how globalization, the Internet, and international development have brought clashing ideals of gender and sexuality into new configurations.
The Discomfort of Evening, by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison (Graywolf). The narrator of this novel, the winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize, is the daughter of religious farmers in Holland. Surrounded by death—a drowned brother, the culling of diseased cows that she loves, suicidal threats from her mother—she makes a series of “sacrifices” to try to keep her family, and her own body, from changing. Her parents have banned Google and TV, believing them evil, but their authority collapses, leaving a silence that she fills with her own fantastic speculations: if she takes her coat off, she will sicken. In matter-of-fact prose, the banalities and horrors blend as she longs for a rescuer.
High as the Waters Rise, by Anja Kampmann, translated from the German by Anne Posten (Catapult). This first novel by an established poet examines the marginalized lives of European laborers. An oil-rig worker, traumatized after a friend disappears at sea, embarks on a journey of self-discovery—to old haunts in Malta, Italy, and Germany, and to his friend’s home town, in Hungary. Along the way, he encounters old and new friends and lovers, who often share his sense of being left behind in the wake of supposed progress. Although Kampmann addresses current events, such as environmental degradation and the precariousness of modern Europe, her focus is on how ideas of masculinity affect one man’s ability to grieve.