newyorker--2020-02-14--The Polar Explorer Colin O’Brady and the Problem with “Firsts”

Fewer and fewer places on Earth offer what the adventuring and exploration world calls “ firsts.
” Consider Antarctica .
An expedition led by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911 .
Nearly half a century later , Vivian Fuchs , an Englishman , led a team that crossed the entire continent .
Børge Ousland , another Norwegian , crossed the continent alone , without receiving outside support , in 1997 .
Ousland sometimes fashioned a makeshift kite so that the wind would drag him along , and , later , people in the polar-exploration community would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assistance that one might try to do without .
According to this criteria , no one , to that point , had crossed the entire continent alone without support or assistance .
The Englishman Henry Worsley tried to do it four years ago , but died from the attempt .
For those not steeped in the particulars of modern polar exploration , these distinctions can easily blur .
If you Google “ first person to cross Antarctica ” you will likely be directed to many search results about Colin O ’ Brady , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Oregon , who has an affinity for firsts .
In the past few years , he has become the first person to Snapchat from atop Mount Everest , and he completed something called the “ Explorers Grand Slam ” faster than anyone ever had , among other accomplishments .
In 2018 , he attempted a solo crossing of Antarctica that was billed as both unsupported and unassisted—and he made it , becoming the first person to do so .
( Louis Rudd , a forty-nine-year-old Brit , finished two days behind O @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promotional billing . )
“ There ’ s been a milestone at the bottom of the world , ” NPR announced .
The Times declared that it “ could go down as one of the great feats in polar history.
” The mayor of Portland proclaimed December 26th to be Colin O ’ Brady Day .
O ’ Brady wrote a memoir , “ The Impossible First : From Fire To Ice—Crossing Antarctica Alone , ” which was published last month .
My colleague David Kortava wrote , of the book , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neither cautionary nor inspirational ; it ’ s a Rorschach test for one ’ s own character and aspirations .
To what extremes would you go , and how much punishment would you endure , in the service of a single goal ?
” Then , on February 3rd , National Geographic published a seven-thousand-word article by Aaron Teasdale titled “ The Problem with Colin O ’ Brady.
” Teasdale , a freelance writer who had published an earlier story hailing O ’ Brady ’ s trek , acknowledges that O ’ Brady @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s no stranger to epic challenges.
” But , he writes , “ key details ” in O ’ Brady ’ s book and his promotion of the expedition “ do not withstand scrutiny.
” At the beginning of the piece , Teasdale describes a passage in “ The Impossible First ” in which O ’ Brady writes that Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions—a company that helps to plan the handful of ambitious polar expeditions undertaken each year , and serves as an authoritative voice on whether a trek qualifies as a first—told him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cross , “ If you call for help in here , you won ’ t get it.
” Teasdale reports that safety managers for A.L.E .
“ deny saying he couldn ’ t be rescued.
” Teasdale cites other people who are quoted in the book , and who dispute comments that O ’ Brady has attributed to them .
He also highlights O ’ Brady ’ s evident knack for self-promotion , and , drawing on interviews with some of those who have participated in expeditions with O ’ Brady , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
On Thursday , O ’ Brady posted a sixteen-page letter to National Geographic on his Web site and on Instagram , asking the magazine to retract the article , calling it “ wildly inaccurate ” and insisting that it “ misrepresents a historic polar expedition.
” O ’ Brady points to Teasdale ’ s earlier piece celebrating his accomplishment and notes various minor inaccuracies and misspellings ( some of these appear to have been fixed ; O ’ Brady writes that the piece refers to him at one point as “ O @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the case now ) .
He also says that Teasdale only spoke with him briefly , by phone , and claims that he offered to speak at length with Teasdale in person but was rebuffed .
National Geographic denies this .
“ O ’ Brady was contacted on several occasions to confirm facts and claims , ” a spokesperson for National Geographic said , when I asked about these assertions , adding , “ Mr .
O ’ Brady was given the opportunity to respond over the course of almost two weeks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Teasdale .
Eventually , O ’ Brady stopped responding to Teasdale ’ s inquiries.
” Before O ’ Brady had shared the letter publicly , I spoke with him by phone .
“ I don ’ t understand , ” he said , referring to Teasdale ’ s piece .
“ Why now ?
” The spokesperson for National Geographic told me that Teasdale , after writing his earlier piece about the expedition , and speaking at length with O ’ Brady in January , 2019 , “ uncovered important details ” about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months , ultimately speaking to more than thirty-five sources .
He then waited to read an advance copy of O ’ Brady ’ s book , and to speak with people , including O ’ Brady , about the claims made there and elsewhere .
In his letter , O ’ Brady expresses regret for possibly hurting the feelings of those he has worked with .
“ I want to express my sincere apologies to anyone who feels that I was harsh with them during my previous expeditions , ” he writes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ treat anyone poorly.
” But , as for the claim that he overstated or misstated his achievement , he is firm .
“ Whether my route was as hard as someone else ’ s is subject to anyone ’ s interpretation , ” he writes .
“ However , saying I exaggerated the dangers or difficulty or made false claims about my crossing is simply untrue .
I did something that no one had ever done before.
” On a certain level , this last insistence , that O ’ Brady did something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be accurate—as even Teasdale , in his story , more or less concedes .
“ It ’ s not so much that no one had been able to cross Antarctica this way before , ” Teasdale writes .
“ It ’ s that no one had defined a crossing in such achievable terms.
” The allegations of dishonesty and exaggeration certainly matter , but the more interesting , and more complicated , argument is about this question of definition .
One can come away from Teasdale ’ s story believing that O ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to win what has lately become something of a game .
O ’ Brady endured a great deal in his successful attempt to solve “ the brutal math problem , ” as he calls it , of surviving alone for nearly two months in one of the planet ’ s most remote and inhospitable places , “ man-hauling ” what began as a nearly four-hundred-pound sled with all of his food and gear for twelve or more hours each day .
But , as Teasdale writes , previous Antarctic expeditions have led today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for ever-more finely sliced accomplishments , ” and what O ’ Brady seems to have done is slice more finely than anyone had sliced before .
Some geography is helpful in understanding his approach .
Antarctica is a sheet of ice that covers a buried landmass and extends beyond it , on either side , from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea , with the South Pole at its center .
O ’ Brady chose a novel and relatively short route across the irregularly shaped terrain—from invisible coastline to pole to invisible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sea .
This made his nine-hundred-mile trip a few hundred miles shorter than most previous attempts ( though Worsley ’ s attempted crossing was roughly the same distance ) .
What ’ s more , thanks to some of the many people who have journeyed across and around Antarctica by this point , there is now a seasonal supply-hauling route on the continent , marked with poles .
This path is used by snowmobiles and the occasional fat-tired recumbent bicycle , Teasdale notes , and O ’ Brady relied on the route for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It stands to reason that this would help with both navigation and avoiding dangerous crevasses cutting through the landscape .
Teasdale observes that “ Worsley avoided the vehicle route.
” Does using it count as “ assistance ” ?

Fewer and fewer places on Earth offer what the adventuring and exploration world calls “firsts.” Consider Antarctica. An expedition led by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911. Nearly half a century later, Vivian Fuchs, an Englishman, led a team that crossed the entire continent. Børge Ousland, another Norwegian, crossed the continent alone, without receiving outside support, in 1997. Ousland sometimes fashioned a makeshift kite so that the wind would drag him along, and, later, people in the polar-exploration community would decide that this sort of thing constituted assistance that one might try to do without. According to this criteria, no one, to that point, had crossed the entire continent alone without support or assistance. The Englishman Henry Worsley tried to do it four years ago, but died from the attempt.
For those not steeped in the particulars of modern polar exploration, these distinctions can easily blur. If you Google “first person to cross Antarctica” you will likely be directed to many search results about Colin O’Brady, an ambitious thirty-four-year-old endurance athlete from Portland, Oregon, who has an affinity for firsts. In the past few years, he has become the first person to Snapchat from atop Mount Everest, and he completed something called the “Explorers Grand Slam” faster than anyone ever had, among other accomplishments. In 2018, he attempted a solo crossing of Antarctica that was billed as both unsupported and unassisted—and he made it, becoming the first person to do so. (Louis Rudd, a forty-nine-year-old Brit, finished two days behind O’Brady using the same route and promotional billing.) “There’s been a milestone at the bottom of the world,” NPR announced. The Times declared that it “could go down as one of the great feats in polar history.” The mayor of Portland proclaimed December 26th to be Colin O’Brady Day. O’Brady wrote a memoir, “The Impossible First: From Fire To Ice—Crossing Antarctica Alone,” which was published last month. My colleague David Kortava wrote, of the book, “O’Brady’s story is neither cautionary nor inspirational; it’s a Rorschach test for one’s own character and aspirations. To what extremes would you go, and how much punishment would you endure, in the service of a single goal?”
Then, on February 3rd, National Geographic published a seven-thousand-word article by Aaron Teasdale titled “The Problem with Colin O’Brady.” Teasdale, a freelance writer who had published an earlier story hailing O’Brady’s trek, acknowledges that O’Brady is a “talented athlete who’s no stranger to epic challenges.” But, he writes, “key details” in O’Brady’s book and his promotion of the expedition “do not withstand scrutiny.” At the beginning of the piece, Teasdale describes a passage in “The Impossible First” in which O’Brady writes that Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions—a company that helps to plan the handful of ambitious polar expeditions undertaken each year, and serves as an authoritative voice on whether a trek qualifies as a first—told him, of an area he was about to cross, “If you call for help in here, you won’t get it.” Teasdale reports that safety managers for A.L.E. “deny saying he couldn’t be rescued.”
Teasdale cites other people who are quoted in the book, and who dispute comments that O’Brady has attributed to them. He also highlights O’Brady’s evident knack for self-promotion, and, drawing on interviews with some of those who have participated in expeditions with O’Brady, characterizes him as something of a jerk.
On Thursday, O’Brady posted a sixteen-page letter to National Geographic on his Web site and on Instagram, asking the magazine to retract the article, calling it “wildly inaccurate” and insisting that it “misrepresents a historic polar expedition.” O’Brady points to Teasdale’s earlier piece celebrating his accomplishment and notes various minor inaccuracies and misspellings (some of these appear to have been fixed; O’Brady writes that the piece refers to him at one point as “O’Brien,” but that is not the case now). He also says that Teasdale only spoke with him briefly, by phone, and claims that he offered to speak at length with Teasdale in person but was rebuffed. National Geographic denies this. “O’Brady was contacted on several occasions to confirm facts and claims,” a spokesperson for National Geographic said, when I asked about these assertions, adding, “Mr. O’Brady was given the opportunity to respond over the course of almost two weeks to the topics and questions presented by Teasdale. Eventually, O’Brady stopped responding to Teasdale’s inquiries.”
Before O’Brady had shared the letter publicly, I spoke with him by phone. “I don’t understand,” he said, referring to Teasdale’s piece. “Why now?” The spokesperson for National Geographic told me that Teasdale, after writing his earlier piece about the expedition, and speaking at length with O’Brady in January, 2019, “uncovered important details” about the trek that he subsequently researched for months, ultimately speaking to more than thirty-five sources. He then waited to read an advance copy of O’Brady’s book, and to speak with people, including O’Brady, about the claims made there and elsewhere. In his letter, O’Brady expresses regret for possibly hurting the feelings of those he has worked with. “I want to express my sincere apologies to anyone who feels that I was harsh with them during my previous expeditions,” he writes. “It was never my intention to treat anyone poorly.” But, as for the claim that he overstated or misstated his achievement, he is firm. “Whether my route was as hard as someone else’s is subject to anyone’s interpretation,” he writes. “However, saying I exaggerated the dangers or difficulty or made false claims about my crossing is simply untrue. I did something that no one had ever done before.”
On a certain level, this last insistence, that O’Brady did something no one had done, seems to be accurate—as even Teasdale, in his story, more or less concedes. “It’s not so much that no one had been able to cross Antarctica this way before,” Teasdale writes. “It’s that no one had defined a crossing in such achievable terms.” The allegations of dishonesty and exaggeration certainly matter, but the more interesting, and more complicated, argument is about this question of definition. One can come away from Teasdale’s story believing that O’Brady simply figured out a clever way to win what has lately become something of a game. O’Brady endured a great deal in his successful attempt to solve “the brutal math problem,” as he calls it, of surviving alone for nearly two months in one of the planet’s most remote and inhospitable places, “man-hauling” what began as a nearly four-hundred-pound sled with all of his food and gear for twelve or more hours each day. But, as Teasdale writes, previous Antarctic expeditions have led today’s explorers to create “criteria for ever-more finely sliced accomplishments,” and what O’Brady seems to have done is slice more finely than anyone had sliced before.
Some geography is helpful in understanding his approach. Antarctica is a sheet of ice that covers a buried landmass and extends beyond it, on either side, from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, with the South Pole at its center. O’Brady chose a novel and relatively short route across the irregularly shaped terrain—from invisible coastline to pole to invisible coastline, rather than from sea to sea. This made his nine-hundred-mile trip a few hundred miles shorter than most previous attempts (though Worsley’s attempted crossing was roughly the same distance). What’s more, thanks to some of the many people who have journeyed across and around Antarctica by this point, there is now a seasonal supply-hauling route on the continent, marked with poles. This path is used by snowmobiles and the occasional fat-tired recumbent bicycle, Teasdale notes, and O’Brady relied on the route for more than a third of his crossing. It stands to reason that this would help with both navigation and avoiding dangerous crevasses cutting through the landscape. Teasdale observes that “Worsley avoided the vehicle route.” Does using it count as “assistance”?
When O’Brady was planning his trip, Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions said that it did not count as such—and the company ultimately confirmed O’Brady’s success. Teasdale acknowledges this, although he notes that A.L.E. might have a conflict of interest, because O’Brady employed the company to help with pre- and post-trip logistics. Much of his story consists of other adventurers disagreeing with A.L.E.’s assessment, which they began to do long before Teasdale wrote the piece. “Details matter,” Conrad Anker, the mountaineer and author, wrote on Twitter, shortly after O’Brady finished his expedition. “IMHO skiing on a tractor road is a bigger ‘aid’ than a kite.” Teasdale also quotes Eric Philips, the co-founder and president of the International Polar Guides Association, who said that O’Brady didn’t do what was “advertised,” adding, “This wasn’t some Last Great Polar Journey. Rather, it was a truncated route that was a first in only a very limited way.”
In his letter to National Geographic, O’Brady cites an e-mail from Philips with the subject heading “Congratulations,” which Philips had sent him a few days after he completed the trek, and suggests that it contradicts what Philips told Teasdale. But that’s debatable—and the fact that both Teasdale and O’Brady can point to Philips in support of their arguments suggests the semantic knottiness at the heart of the contemporary quest for firsts. In the e-mail, Philips writes, “There is a widely held view that your expedition cannot be classified as unassisted or as an accepted crossing of Antarctica.” He goes on:
There is no debate over your spectacular feat of endurance or authentic intention, only that the current labeling system of unsupported/unassisted is hopelessly inadequate and has not served you well. For this and on behalf of the wider polar community, I sincerely apologise and have taken it upon myself to begin the process of developing a new classification system that both grades all previous expeditions and gives future expeditioners a more accurate guide on how their trip will compare with others and where it will stand in history.
In other words, the polar first, these days, is less about doing something first, let alone doing something impossible, and more about doing something that exists somewhere on a spectrum of previous achievement—perhaps even doing something that’s a little bit different and a little bit harder than the many very, very hard things that have been done before. Teasdale writes, of the various contemporary classifications, that they might “seem like hairsplitting,” but also insists that they “create a framework to build on earlier achievements and claim new firsts”; he quotes the Antarctic explorer Damien Gildea, who says that the various categories “are guidelines to quality and progress.” Perhaps. But they are also hairsplitting.
Our egos and imaginations seek primacy and purity. National Geographic has always existed, in part, to tell romantic stories of adventurers. Teasdale describes the people achieving modern firsts as “living laboratories of mental and physical endurance” and “the driving force in expanding our collective knowledge of the planet’s remote corners.” He also admits that we live in “the postmodern age of adventure in which feats are more logistical challenge than exploration.” At one point in the piece, he writes, “Just as there is a bright line between nonfiction and fiction in the publishing and film worlds, so it is for professional adventurers. Revenues from books, films, TV shows, speaking events, and sponsorships are derived from the notion that what is being sold is real—the meaning can be debated and the value to society, but the truth about the accomplishments is the bedrock for this industry.” Honesty is essential and the truth is paramount, particularly at a moment when standards for accuracy and good faith are under various forms of attack. But the notion that there is something as simple as “a bright line,” in the publishing and film industries, between fiction and nonfiction, or that sponsorships and TV deals are built on a bedrock of what is real, seems rather arguable. Teasdale’s investigation is an illuminating report on just how complex professional adventuring has become. But even he seems reluctant to accept the possibility that, at this point, none of us are first.


newyorker--2020-02-14--What Happened to Elizabeth Warren?

What Happened to Elizabeth Warren?

Subscribers to The New Yorker ’ s new 2020 election newsletter , On the Trail , received this piece in their in-boxes .
Sign up to receive future installments .
Certain Presidential campaigns have the texture of money—of organization , of talent , of intentionality .
It ’ s an obvious kind of quality : the difference between shopping at a Whole Foods and a Pathmark .
For the past year , in the Democratic primary , Elizabeth Warren ’ s campaign has had that texture .
Some of this quality was expressed in obvious ways : Warren ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Washington Square Park in September , set against the lit white arch before a crowd estimated at twenty thousand .
The selfie line , a wonder of choreography in person , had the bespoke intricacy of a Wes Anderson scene .
The Warren campaign developed a signature color , “ liberty green.
” The thorough policies that were unveiled each week were developed by a large , talented , connected policy staff .
If rival candidates felt sidelined ( and many of them did ) by the relentlessly positive press Warren seemed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of last year , then they ought to have considered how impressive the human machine behind Warren seemed .
Voters fall for candidates .
Reporters fall for campaigns .
Warren spent on people rather than ads .
Her campaign had a high burn rate , everyone warned .
What made her rivals jealous were her organizers—the phalanx of young people , many of them women , who clustered along the sides of her events , looking intent , and who then spread out into the precincts to carry ( and , in truth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that talent , expertise , and commitment could excise corruption and remove Donald Trump from power .
Young staffers on liberal political campaigns often display the slightly censorious cheerfulness of a resident-hall adviser , but the Warren organizers possessed a hawkeyed attention to detail and the essential American energy of malaria eradicators .
“ The operation has been the envy of all her rivals for months , ” Gabriel Debenedetti wrote in New York , in January .
Recently , an endorser of a rival campaign asked the Washington Post ’ s Holly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like , where did they find these kids ?
” This fall , as Warren made some obvious strategic errors—overestimating the enthusiasm for transformative economic policy among her base of professionals and relying too narrowly on an activist ethos to win the support of voters of color—her campaign harbored the hope that its army of talent would carry it .
But in Iowa last week , and then in the New Hampshire primary , this Tuesday , it became obvious that it couldn ’ t .
At the critical debate last Friday night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how amazing the Warren operation was for a year , it ’ s just depressing to see them panicking now , ” an aide to a rival campaign told me at a New Hampshire event on Monday .
As the world of Democratic politics was contemplating the disarray of the Warren campaign this week , it had another example to consider : Amy Klobuchar was moving along the very same axis , in exactly the opposite direction .
Ever since her campaign launch was obscured in reports about her cruel treatment of her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a clear impression : she had no memorable policy proposals , few funds , scant staff .
Her appearances were genial but often slightly rambling : shortly before the Iowa caucuses , in a speech to the Iowa state teachers ’ union , I watched Klobuchar digress so long that the teachers cut off her microphone .
Last Thursday , when rumors of Klobuchar ’ s rise in New Hampshire were starting to spread , I watched her give a standard Democratic foreign-policy speech to an audience of a few dozen , including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Danish animal farm .
But Klobuchar always understood more keenly than Warren the dissatisfactions Democratic voters felt with the field , and , on Friday , in the debate in Manchester , she named them : Sanders and Warren had bet on a highly unrealistic policy platform , Buttigieg was too young , and , after forty-five consecutive male Presidents , it might be time to elect a woman .
Universally , pundits said she ’ d won the debate , and then voters started saying the same , even those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was with her campaign in Exeter on Monday afternoon , when the back of the room filled with ex-Warren and ex-Joe Biden and ex-Pete Buttigieg supporters who were suddenly Klobuchar-curious , and then that evening , at an American Legion hall in Rochester , when voters seemed to be committing to her .
Klobuchar leaned on her best case—that , for an election season when Democrats have fixed on the matter of who is most electable , she was a perfect fit , having swept three elections in a purple state , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ district each time .
After the returns came in on Tuesday night in New Hampshire , she ’ d received more than twice as many votes as Warren .
Klobuchar played a little role in the race for the full calendar year of 2019 .
But she ’ d won the last two news cycles before the New Hampshire vote—the forty-eight hours that proved essential .
Bernie Sanders is the clear leader in a very fluid race .
But the contrast between Warren ’ s fortunes and Klobuchar ’ s suggests the essential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which is whether grassroots campaigns—people power—still matter .
Michael Bloomberg , by one estimation the ninth-wealthiest person on the planet , who will enter the race in earnest on Super Tuesday , March 3rd , has already spent ( according to a CNN tabulation ) more than three hundred and fifty million dollars on ad spending .
For comparison , Sanders , who has spent more heavily on advertising than any of the other non-billionaires , is at thirty-seven million , and Biden , once the establishment favorite , has been able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coffee a few weeks ago with a senior aide to one of the ousted Presidential candidates , who was marvelling at the salaries that Bloomberg ’ s operation was offering—far more than what other campaigns could afford .
Beyond Bloomberg , Trump looms .

Subscribers to The New Yorker’s new 2020 election newsletter, On the Trail, received this piece in their in-boxes. Sign up to receive future installments.
Certain Presidential campaigns have the texture of money—of organization, of talent, of intentionality. It’s an obvious kind of quality: the difference between shopping at a Whole Foods and a Pathmark. For the past year, in the Democratic primary, Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has had that texture. Some of this quality was expressed in obvious ways: Warren’s landmark nighttime speech in New York’s Washington Square Park in September, set against the lit white arch before a crowd estimated at twenty thousand. The selfie line, a wonder of choreography in person, had the bespoke intricacy of a Wes Anderson scene. The Warren campaign developed a signature color, “liberty green.” The thorough policies that were unveiled each week were developed by a large, talented, connected policy staff. If rival candidates felt sidelined (and many of them did) by the relentlessly positive press Warren seemed to receive from roughly April until October of last year, then they ought to have considered how impressive the human machine behind Warren seemed. Voters fall for candidates. Reporters fall for campaigns.
Warren spent on people rather than ads. Her campaign had a high burn rate, everyone warned. What made her rivals jealous were her organizers—the phalanx of young people, many of them women, who clustered along the sides of her events, looking intent, and who then spread out into the precincts to carry (and, in truth, embody) Warren’s confidence that talent, expertise, and commitment could excise corruption and remove Donald Trump from power. Young staffers on liberal political campaigns often display the slightly censorious cheerfulness of a resident-hall adviser, but the Warren organizers possessed a hawkeyed attention to detail and the essential American energy of malaria eradicators. “The operation has been the envy of all her rivals for months,” Gabriel Debenedetti wrote in New York, in January. Recently, an endorser of a rival campaign asked the Washington Post’s Holly Bailey, “It’s, like, where did they find these kids?”
This fall, as Warren made some obvious strategic errors—overestimating the enthusiasm for transformative economic policy among her base of professionals and relying too narrowly on an activist ethos to win the support of voters of color—her campaign harbored the hope that its army of talent would carry it. But in Iowa last week, and then in the New Hampshire primary, this Tuesday, it became obvious that it couldn’t. At the critical debate last Friday night, Warren receded. “Having seen how amazing the Warren operation was for a year, it’s just depressing to see them panicking now,” an aide to a rival campaign told me at a New Hampshire event on Monday.
As the world of Democratic politics was contemplating the disarray of the Warren campaign this week, it had another example to consider: Amy Klobuchar was moving along the very same axis, in exactly the opposite direction. Ever since her campaign launch was obscured in reports about her cruel treatment of her senatorial staff, Klobuchar struggled to make a clear impression: she had no memorable policy proposals, few funds, scant staff. Her appearances were genial but often slightly rambling: shortly before the Iowa caucuses, in a speech to the Iowa state teachers’ union, I watched Klobuchar digress so long that the teachers cut off her microphone.
Last Thursday, when rumors of Klobuchar’s rise in New Hampshire were starting to spread, I watched her give a standard Democratic foreign-policy speech to an audience of a few dozen, including a story about a time she visited a Danish animal farm. But Klobuchar always understood more keenly than Warren the dissatisfactions Democratic voters felt with the field, and, on Friday, in the debate in Manchester, she named them: Sanders and Warren had bet on a highly unrealistic policy platform, Buttigieg was too young, and, after forty-five consecutive male Presidents, it might be time to elect a woman. Universally, pundits said she’d won the debate, and then voters started saying the same, even those who hadn’t actually watched it.
I was with her campaign in Exeter on Monday afternoon, when the back of the room filled with ex-Warren and ex-Joe Biden and ex-Pete Buttigieg supporters who were suddenly Klobuchar-curious, and then that evening, at an American Legion hall in Rochester, when voters seemed to be committing to her. Klobuchar leaned on her best case—that, for an election season when Democrats have fixed on the matter of who is most electable, she was a perfect fit, having swept three elections in a purple state, winning even Michele Bachmann’s conservative district each time. After the returns came in on Tuesday night in New Hampshire, she’d received more than twice as many votes as Warren. Klobuchar played a little role in the race for the full calendar year of 2019. But she’d won the last two news cycles before the New Hampshire vote—the forty-eight hours that proved essential.
Bernie Sanders is the clear leader in a very fluid race. But the contrast between Warren’s fortunes and Klobuchar’s suggests the essential question of the campaign this month, which is whether grassroots campaigns—people power—still matter. Michael Bloomberg, by one estimation the ninth-wealthiest person on the planet, who will enter the race in earnest on Super Tuesday, March 3rd, has already spent (according to a CNN tabulation) more than three hundred and fifty million dollars on ad spending. For comparison, Sanders, who has spent more heavily on advertising than any of the other non-billionaires, is at thirty-seven million, and Biden, once the establishment favorite, has been able to spend just twelve million. I had coffee a few weeks ago with a senior aide to one of the ousted Presidential candidates, who was marvelling at the salaries that Bloomberg’s operation was offering—far more than what other campaigns could afford. Beyond Bloomberg, Trump looms.


newyorker--2020-02-16--The Bodies Buried Beneath Boris Johnson’s New Railway

This week , Boris Johnson , the Prime Minister of Great Britain , announced that the construction of a high-speed rail link between London and the North of England , known as HS2 , would go ahead .
This decision was made despite spiralling costs—the estimated bill for the project is a hundred and six billion pounds , nearly double the amount budgeted for it five years ago—and amid concerns that the new tracks laid for the trains , which will travel at speeds of up to two hundred and fifty miles an hour , will cause environmental damage , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Yes , it is ambitious , but ambition frankly is what we have lacked for far too long , ” Johnson told the House of Commons , on Tuesday .
The project was part of his oft-stated post-Brexit goal , he reminded M.P.s , to “ unite and level up across the whole country.
” The levelling began some years ago around what is intended to be the southern terminus of the rail line : Euston Station .
It was London ’ s first intercity railway station , opening in 1837 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Birmingham , in the West Midlands .
( In 1854 , the novelist George Eliot recommended the 12:30 P.M. departure to a friend from Coventry : “ I reached the Euston station as dusty as an old ledger , but with no other ‘ incommodity.
’ ” ) In the more than hundred and eighty years that Euston has been operational , it has been remodelled several times .
A grand neoclassical Doric archway fronting the original station was demolished in 1961 and replaced by a low , concrete , modernist arrivals-and-departures hall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ HS2 have already caused another transformation : the eradication of St. James ’ s Gardens , a former cemetery that lay immediately to the west of the station , and through which the train ’ s new tracks have been projected to sweep .
The burial ground , which was established , in 1788 , to serve the parish of St. James ’ s Church , in Westminster , resembled the city it served , in that it was populous and overcrowded : by the time the cemetery closed , in 1853 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laid to rest there , according to parish records .
As long ago as 1887 , much of its footprint was sacrificed to make way for an expansion of the railway ; Euston ’ s Platforms 17 and 18 now lie over what was the pauper ’ s ground , the cemetery ’ s most densely utilized area .
( What happened to those remains during the station ’ s nineteenth-century expansion is unknown , but it ’ s possible that they were simply dug up or built over . )
After the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acreage of the cemetery was repurposed as a park , with headstones removed to the perimeter .
St. James ’ s Park served generations of living Londoners , offering a small patch of leafy green space for local office workers on their lunch break or for travellers who arrived early for the 12:40 P.M. departure to Manchester .
Late last year , I went to the site of St. James ’ s Gardens to talk to Caroline Raynor , the project manager and principal archeologist for Costain-Skanska Joint Venture , the construction company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for further development .
The temporary roof that had shielded the excavation from the elements , and also from the gaze of curious onlookers , had recently been removed .
All that remained of the gardens , and the cemetery that once lay beneath them , was an enormous pit , with heaps of shovelled-over earth , and the tracks of construction vehicles indenting the blue-gray London clay .
The scale of the project has little in the way of precedent , Raynor explained .
According to guidelines issued by Historic England , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a large cemetery is generally considered to be one in which two thousand burials have been accommodated .
“ So obviously we have blown through and past that guidance quite quickly , ” Raynor said .
She and her team of two hundred workers on the site had disinterred and archeologically excavated slightly more than fifteen thousand individuals , of whom about a tenth have been identified , usually thanks to the information on lead plates with which they were buried .
Coffins , which were commonly made of elm in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have often been well preserved within the clay soil .
“ Elm is a really robust wood that lasts well in waterlogged conditions , ” Raynor explained .
“ You can still find flowing Roman drains under London made from elm—that lasts thousands of years in the right conditions.
” The discoveries beneath St. James ’ s Gardens reveal the preoccupations and concerns of Londoners of the time , in life and in death .
Prior to the Anatomies Act of 1832 , which permitted and regulated the use of corpses for medical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grave robbers was a serious consideration for anyone actually hoping to rest in peace .
For those who could afford them , coffins with complex sets of internal locks and bars were available in high-end funeral parlors , and two have been found on the site .
Raynor ’ s team even uncovered a couple of large stone sarcophagi , of the sort which the ancient Egyptians developed for postmortem security .
The graveyard also reveals that it was possible to elevate one ’ s social standing even after death : the remains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were moved from the lower to the upper ground years after their original interments , the chandler ’ s business having become successful enough to supply the royal household .
Information about age , stature , and cause of death being gleaned from the excavation will help shed light on how Londoners lived and died in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries .
Raynor and her team have found evidence of syphilis , sarcoma , and rickets in the skeletons that have been examined , and have also gained insight into some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for persistent ailments in a pre-antibiotic , pre-anesthetic era , such as trepanation , the drilling of holes into the skull , which was believed to reduce pressure on the brain .
There have been certain disappointments in the excavation : it has proved impossible to determine the precise burial place or discover the remains of Lord George Gordon , the eccentric aristocrat and Member of Parliament who , in 1780 , led fifty thousand anti-Catholic protesters in a march upon Westminster that ended in several days of violent rioting .
Gordon was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but he was ultimately imprisoned on other charges , having been convicted of defaming Marie Antoinette while in France .
He ended his days in Newgate Prison as a pious convert to Judaism , a faith he adopted in the mid-seventeen-eighties ; he was interred in St. James ’ s Gardens in 1793 .
Unfortunately , the plot in which it is believed he was buried was itself buried again , by the incursion into the cemetery , in the nineteen-sixties , of a boiler house .

This past week, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, announced that the construction of a high-speed rail link between London and the North of England, known as HS2, would go ahead. This decision was made despite spiralling costs—the estimated bill for the project is a hundred and six billion pounds, nearly double the amount budgeted for it five years ago—and amid concerns that the new tracks laid for the trains, which will travel at speeds of up to two hundred and fifty miles an hour, will cause environmental damage, cutting through wildlife reserves and ancient woodlands. “Yes, it is ambitious, but ambition frankly is what we have lacked for far too long,” Johnson told the House of Commons, on Tuesday. The project was part of his oft-stated post-Brexit goal, he reminded M.P.s, to “unite and level up across the whole country.”
The levelling began some years ago around what is intended to be the southern terminus of the rail line: Euston Station. It was London’s first intercity railway station, opening in 1837, to serve passengers to and from Birmingham, in the West Midlands. (In 1854, the novelist George Eliot recommended the 12:30 P.M. departure to a friend from Coventry: “I reached the Euston station as dusty as an old ledger, but with no other ‘incommodity.’ ”) In the more than hundred and eighty years that Euston has been operational, it has been remodelled several times. A grand neoclassical Doric archway fronting the original station was demolished in 1961 and replaced by a low, concrete, modernist arrivals-and-departures hall that stands today.
The demands of HS2 have already caused another transformation: the eradication of St. James’s Gardens, a former cemetery that lay immediately to the west of the station, and through which the train’s new tracks have been projected to sweep. The burial ground, which was established, in 1788, to serve the parish of St. James’s Church, in Westminster, resembled the city it served, in that it was populous and overcrowded: by the time the cemetery closed, in 1853, more than sixty thousand Londoners had been laid to rest there, according to parish records. As long ago as 1887, much of its footprint was sacrificed to make way for an expansion of the railway; Euston’s Platforms 17 and 18 now lie over what was the pauper’s ground, the cemetery’s most densely utilized area. (What happened to those remains during the station’s nineteenth-century expansion is unknown, but it’s possible that they were simply dug up or built over.) After the expansion of the railway, the remaining acreage of the cemetery was repurposed as a park, with headstones removed to the perimeter. St. James’s Park served generations of living Londoners, offering a small patch of leafy green space for local office workers on their lunch break or for travellers who arrived early for the 12:40 P.M. departure to Manchester.
Late last year, I went to the site of St. James’s Gardens to talk to Caroline Raynor, the project manager and principal archeologist for Costain-Skanska Joint Venture, the construction company engaged by HS2 to prepare the site for further development. The temporary roof that had shielded the excavation from the elements, and also from the gaze of curious onlookers, had recently been removed. All that remained of the gardens, and the cemetery that once lay beneath them, was an enormous pit, with heaps of shovelled-over earth, and the tracks of construction vehicles indenting the blue-gray London clay.
The scale of the project has little in the way of precedent, Raynor explained. According to guidelines issued by Historic England, the governmental body that oversees heritage sites, a large cemetery is generally considered to be one in which two thousand burials have been accommodated. “So obviously we have blown through and past that guidance quite quickly,” Raynor said. She and her team of two hundred workers on the site had disinterred and archeologically excavated slightly more than fifteen thousand individuals, of whom about a tenth have been identified, usually thanks to the information on lead plates with which they were buried. Coffins, which were commonly made of elm in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, have often been well preserved within the clay soil. “Elm is a really robust wood that lasts well in waterlogged conditions,” Raynor explained. “You can still find flowing Roman drains under London made from elm—that lasts thousands of years in the right conditions.”
Field archeologists at the St. James’s Gardens site have excavated the remains of more than fifteen thousand individuals, of whom about a tenth have been identified. Photograph by Adrian Dennis / AFP / Getty
The discoveries beneath St. James’s Gardens reveal the preoccupations and concerns of Londoners of the time, in life and in death. Prior to the Anatomies Act of 1832, which permitted and regulated the use of corpses for medical research, the threat of disturbance by grave robbers was a serious consideration for anyone actually hoping to rest in peace. For those who could afford them, coffins with complex sets of internal locks and bars were available in high-end funeral parlors, and two have been found on the site. Raynor’s team even uncovered a couple of large stone sarcophagi, of the sort which the ancient Egyptians developed for postmortem security.
The graveyard also reveals that it was possible to elevate one’s social standing even after death: the remains of family members of one tallow chandler were moved from the lower to the upper ground years after their original interments, the chandler’s business having become successful enough to supply the royal household. Information about age, stature, and cause of death being gleaned from the excavation will help shed light on how Londoners lived and died in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Raynor and her team have found evidence of syphilis, sarcoma, and rickets in the skeletons that have been examined, and have also gained insight into some of the brutal cures that were attempted for persistent ailments in a pre-antibiotic, pre-anesthetic era, such as trepanation, the drilling of holes into the skull, which was believed to reduce pressure on the brain.
There have been certain disappointments in the excavation: it has proved impossible to determine the precise burial place or discover the remains of Lord George Gordon, the eccentric aristocrat and Member of Parliament who, in 1780, led fifty thousand anti-Catholic protesters in a march upon Westminster that ended in several days of violent rioting. Gordon was tried and acquitted of high treason, but he was ultimately imprisoned on other charges, having been convicted of defaming Marie Antoinette while in France. He ended his days in Newgate Prison as a pious convert to Judaism, a faith he adopted in the mid-seventeen-eighties; he was interred in St. James’s Gardens in 1793. Unfortunately, the plot in which it is believed he was buried was itself buried again, by the incursion into the cemetery, in the nineteen-sixties, of a boiler house.
Boris Johnson is known for his fondness for spectacular infrastructure projects. As mayor of London, he championed an ill-fated “garden bridge” across the Thames, on which thirty-seven million pounds of public money were expended without a single pile ever being driven. He also called for the construction of an airport on a man-made island to be built in the Thames estuary, which the tabloids helpfully nominated “Boris Island.” More recently, he has floated the notion of building a road bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland, a scheme routinely described by observers as “bonkers.” Tuesday’s high-speed-rail announcement came coupled with slightly more earthbound promises: a five-billion-pound investment in the funding of regional bus services and the construction of more bike paths. The first stage of HS2, linking Birmingham to London, is projected to be completed between 2028 and 2031. With an eighty-one-seat parliamentary majority at present, Johnson no doubt hopes still to be heading the government, and waving a flag on the platform, when the trains start rolling into the capital; though even he can barely hope still to be in power by 2040, which is when the line’s northernmost stretches, to Manchester and Leeds, are projected to be completed.


newyorker--2020-02-16--Baseball, Fiction, and Life: Roger Angell’s Era-Spanning Career at The New Yorker

In 1944 , Roger Angell sold a short story to The New Yorker .
He was , perhaps , an outsider ’ s idea of an insider—his mother , the editor Katharine White , worked at the magazine .
What followed , a career at The New Yorker now in its eighth decade , has spanned a range of roles and genres that would have seemed inconceivable in 1944 , some of them because they did not exist until Angell invented them .
He soon abandoned writing fiction for editing it , joining the fiction department in 1956 .
Six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ William Shawn , Angell headed to Sarasota for baseball ’ s spring training ; since then , his writing about the sport has been the standard by which others are measured .
In 2014 , the National Baseball Hall of Fame gave him the J. G. Taylor Spink Award , its highest honor for writers .
At Cooperstown , he went in with Joe Torre , his longtime source and friend .
For many years , Angell was known outside The New Yorker mostly as a baseball writer .
In the late nineties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brown and then David Remnick , he began to write about himself—tangentially , at least .
His essays about Martinis , divorce , and the Second World War were piercing and lively , funny and occasionally just very deeply sad .
He had been known as a great baseball writer—now it was clear that he was a great writer .
In 2014 , Angell published a piece called “ This Old Man , ” an account of the mixed blessings of old age .
At ninety-three , he went viral .
Angell is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to view him as a keeper of institutional memory , a plaque on the wall reading “ This was The New Yorker.
” And , indeed , he can tell anecdotes about writers and editors from all eras of the magazine .
But he ’ s more likely to say , “ I learned something truly amazing today !
” For the Anniversary Issue , I visited him at the apartment he shares with his wife , Peggy Moorman , to talk about his life at the magazine .
When you were growing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White , was working at The New Yorker , would you go into the office ?
Now and then .
I ’ d visit her and we ’ d often go out for lunch at speakeasies—what you ’ d think of now as an Italian restaurant—because there was better food .
There was one near the office called Mino ’ s , where we used to sometimes have lunch .
So when did you first start seeing people from the magazine ?
My mother became an editor a few months after the magazine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
After my parents were divorced , and my mother married E. B .
( Andy ) White , I saw her on frequent long weekends and long vacations .
The conversation would be about Harold Ross and The New Yorker , and I was an avid listener .
The great thing about Ross , which I figured out over the years , is the amount of power , influence , taste , and judgment he entrusted to women , my mother among them .
During the war , he had two foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Janet Flanner , in France .
These were big jobs .
And my mother did more and more at the magazine .
She became a poetry editor , she became a fiction editor , and , within less than ten years , she was also one of the art editors , sitting in on art meetings .
Ross counted on her for everything .
He was nothing like her : he ’ d not been to college ; he had grown up in Aspen , Colorado , and gone straight to the newspapers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Stars & Stripes , in Europe , during the First World War .
And he ’ s reputed to have talked obscenely , but most of these “ obscenities ” were along the lines of “ Oh , my God.
” Do you know how she got the job ?
I think that Ross was probably looking for somebody with a little culture .
He had male writers that he knew and drank with , and I think he wanted a woman , and he got one .
And he really recognized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how strong her judgment was .
She asserted herself—she was not frightened by Ross in any way .
Do you remember some of the first pieces that you actually read in the magazine ?
I can ’ t remember the pieces ; what I did as a kid was memorize the cartoons .
There were bound copies of all the back issues in my mother and Andy ’ s house , in Maine .
When I was about thirteen or fourteen I said , “ I can give the caption to every drawing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ magazine.
” And they said , “ Come on , show us.
” And I did—I ’ d memorized every single caption of every cartoon .
I didn ’ t always understand them .
There was a beautiful Helen Hokinson drawing of a middle-aged lady at a bookstore booth in Paris saying , “ Avez-vous ‘ Ulysses ’ ?
” because James Joyce ’ s “ Ulysses ” was banned in this country .
When did you start writing yourself ?
Well , when I was nine , Andy White sent a verse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose “ Conning Tower ” was , at the time , the most important column in the World , a significant daily newspaper .
My verse went : And that was signed “ Roger A. , Nine.
” Then in high school , at Pomfret , I tried out for the school newspaper , and one of the first people I interviewed was Benny Goodman .
I was fourteen or fifteen , and I went to the Madhattan Room , at the Hotel Pennsylvania , where he was playing , and one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a young humor writer my mother knew , and he knew Benny Goodman .
I asked Benny Goodman if I could interview him , and he said , “ Come to my hotel room tomorrow , at one in the afternoon.
” So I went up at one and rang his bell and rang it and rang it , and then he came to the door wearing his jockey shorts and his eyeglasses , very sleepy .
I ’ d woken him up .
My lede on the story was “ Great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a couple of years later—or maybe later that year—a friend and I went down to City Hall to visit Fiorello LaGuardia , on our own , and said , “ Can we interview the mayor ?
” And they said , “ Sure , that ’ d be O.K.
, sit there.
” And we sat all day outside his office , and people came and went , and they brought us food , and then , in the end , we got in .
And I noted that LaGuardia was so short @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chair , his feet didn ’ t touch the ground .
We had prepared a good question : “ Do you think that any kids in New York public schools can get an education as good as we ’ re getting at private school ?
” And he went off like a rocket !
He began yelling and carrying on , and then he stopped and looked .
.
.
and he said , “ You got me .
”

In 1944, Roger Angell sold a short story to The New Yorker. He was, perhaps, an outsider’s idea of an insider—his mother, the editor Katharine White, worked at the magazine. What followed, a career at The New Yorker now in its eighth decade, has spanned a range of roles and genres that would have seemed inconceivable in 1944, some of them because they did not exist until Angell invented them. He soon abandoned writing fiction for editing it, joining the fiction department in 1956. Six years later, after a suggestion from William Shawn, Angell headed to Sarasota for baseball’s spring training; since then, his writing about the sport has been the standard by which others are measured. In 2014, the National Baseball Hall of Fame gave him the J. G. Taylor Spink Award, its highest honor for writers. At Cooperstown, he went in with Joe Torre, his longtime source and friend.
For many years, Angell was known outside The New Yorker mostly as a baseball writer. In the late nineties, with the encouragement of first Tina Brown and then David Remnick, he began to write about himself—tangentially, at least. His essays about Martinis, divorce, and the Second World War were piercing and lively, funny and occasionally just very deeply sad. He had been known as a great baseball writer—now it was clear that he was a great writer. In 2014, Angell published a piece called “This Old Man,” an account of the mixed blessings of old age. At ninety-three, he went viral.
Angell is now ninety-nine, and it is tempting to view him as a keeper of institutional memory, a plaque on the wall reading “This was The New Yorker.” And, indeed, he can tell anecdotes about writers and editors from all eras of the magazine. But he’s more likely to say, “I learned something truly amazing today!” For the Anniversary Issue, I visited him at the apartment he shares with his wife, Peggy Moorman, to talk about his life at the magazine.
When you were growing up, and your mother, Katharine White, was working at The New Yorker, would you go into the office?
Now and then. I’d visit her and we’d often go out for lunch at speakeasies—what you’d think of now as an Italian restaurant—because there was better food. There was one near the office called Mino’s, where we used to sometimes have lunch.
So when did you first start seeing people from the magazine?
My mother became an editor a few months after the magazine started. I was five years old. After my parents were divorced, and my mother married E. B. (Andy) White, I saw her on frequent long weekends and long vacations. The conversation would be about Harold Ross and The New Yorker, and I was an avid listener.
The great thing about Ross, which I figured out over the years, is the amount of power, influence, taste, and judgment he entrusted to women, my mother among them. During the war, he had two foreign correspondents—Mollie Panter-Downes, in London, and Janet Flanner, in France. These were big jobs. And my mother did more and more at the magazine. She became a poetry editor, she became a fiction editor, and, within less than ten years, she was also one of the art editors, sitting in on art meetings.
Ross counted on her for everything. He was nothing like her: he’d not been to college; he had grown up in Aspen, Colorado, and gone straight to the newspapers, and then was the editor of the Stars & Stripes, in Europe, during the First World War. And he’s reputed to have talked obscenely, but most of these “obscenities” were along the lines of “Oh, my God.”
Do you know how she got the job?
I think that Ross was probably looking for somebody with a little culture. He had male writers that he knew and drank with, and I think he wanted a woman, and he got one. And he really recognized very quickly how good she was, how strong her judgment was. She asserted herself—she was not frightened by Ross in any way.
Do you remember some of the first pieces that you actually read in the magazine?
I can’t remember the pieces; what I did as a kid was memorize the cartoons. There were bound copies of all the back issues in my mother and Andy’s house, in Maine. When I was about thirteen or fourteen I said, “I can give the caption to every drawing that’s ever been in the magazine.” And they said, “Come on, show us.” And I did—I’d memorized every single caption of every cartoon. I didn’t always understand them. There was a beautiful Helen Hokinson drawing of a middle-aged lady at a bookstore booth in Paris saying, “Avez-vous ‘Ulysses’?” because James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was banned in this country.
When did you start writing yourself?
Well, when I was nine, Andy White sent a verse of mine to Franklin P. Adams, whose “Conning Tower” was, at the time, the most important column in the World, a significant daily newspaper. My verse went:
My room is full of banners,
My bed is full of sheets,
My father learns me manners,
And my mother gives me eats.
And that was signed “Roger A., Nine.”
Then in high school, at Pomfret, I tried out for the school newspaper, and one of the first people I interviewed was Benny Goodman. I was fourteen or fifteen, and I went to the Madhattan Room, at the Hotel Pennsylvania, where he was playing, and one of the people there was S. J. Perelman, a young humor writer my mother knew, and he knew Benny Goodman.
I asked Benny Goodman if I could interview him, and he said, “Come to my hotel room tomorrow, at one in the afternoon.” So I went up at one and rang his bell and rang it and rang it, and then he came to the door wearing his jockey shorts and his eyeglasses, very sleepy. I’d woken him up. My lede on the story was “Great bandleaders get to sleep late.”
And a couple of years later—or maybe later that year—a friend and I went down to City Hall to visit Fiorello LaGuardia, on our own, and said, “Can we interview the mayor?” And they said, “Sure, that’d be O.K., sit there.” And we sat all day outside his office, and people came and went, and they brought us food, and then, in the end, we got in. And I noted that LaGuardia was so short that when he sat in his mayoral chair, his feet didn’t touch the ground. We had prepared a good question: “Do you think that any kids in New York public schools can get an education as good as we’re getting at private school?” And he went off like a rocket! He began yelling and carrying on, and then he stopped and looked . . . and he said, “You got me.”
So you go to Harvard, you come out and it’s wartime, and you immediately go into the service?
I was a senior when Pearl Harbor came along, and during Christmas break I was told there was an opening in Navy public relations for a young ensign. But you had to pass a physical. I said, “I wear eyeglasses,” and they said, “Well, you have to pass the eye test.” So I walk into this gigantic armory wearing my Harvard tweeds and loafers, and there are about a thousand naked men in there, going into the Navy. Everybody looks at me with hatred. I’m getting nervous, because I couldn’t see very well. There was a little strip about twenty feet away on the wall with the 20/20-vision thing. And they take away my glasses, I cover my better eye, and they say, “Walk up until you can read this.” So I creep up—to increasing laughter—until I’m about a foot away, and then I read it. And the guy says, “Do you want do to the other eye?” And I said, “No, no, let’s not.” So I’m turned down by the Navy.


newyorker--2020-02-16--Sunday Reading: The Art of the Profile

Sunday Reading: The Art of the Profile

This week , The New Yorker will be celebrating its ninety-fifth anniversary .
( The first issue of the magazine was published on February 21 , 1925 . )
To mark this occasion , we ’ re bringing you a selection of twelve classic profiles from our archive—some well known , others less so , but all delightful .
In “ Joe Gould ’ s Secret , ” Joseph Mitchell examines the life of a Greenwich Village bohemian who claims to be the author of the longest book ever written .
In “ Orchid Fever , ” Susan Orlean writes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ obsessive pursuit of rare orchids .
( “ To desire orchids is to have a desire that can never be fully requited .
A collector who wants one of every orchid species will die before even coming close.
” ) In “ The Duke in His Domain , ” Truman Capote profiles the actor Marlon Brando on the set of his film “ Sayonara , ” in 1957 .
Mark Singer chronicles the artistry of the master illusionist and sleight-of-hand expert Ricky Jay , and Janet Malcolm describes the inventive and surprising work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Ghosts in the House , ” Hilton Als recounts how the novelist Toni Morrison has influenced multiple generations of black writers .
( “ Love and disaster and all the other forms of human incident accumulate in Morrison ’ s fictional houses.
” ) In “ Making a Noise in the World , ” Brendan Gill examines the troubled life of the theatre and film actress Tallulah Bankhead .
In “ White Like Me , ” Henry Louis Gates , Jr. , considers the career of the legendary literary critic Anatole Broyard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passing as white .
George W. S. Trow visits with the former Vogue editor and style icon Diana Vreeland as she prepares a new costume exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art , and Jervis Anderson follows the author Ralph Ellison as he takes a sojourn in his home town of Oklahoma City .
In “ How Do You Like It Now , Gentlemen ?
, ” Lillian Ross explores Manhattan with the renowned novelist Ernest Hemingway .
( “ ‘ After you finish a book , you know , you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ But no one knows you ’ re dead .
All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.
’ ” ) Finally , in “ The Days of Duveen , ” S. N. Behrman traces the iconic career of Joseph Duveen , one of the most influential art dealers of his time .
Taken together , these pieces are an exhilarating reminder of the power of literary portraits .
Ultimately , they help us see people , both strange and familiar , in expressive and moving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the vivid , unforgettable personalities that The New Yorker has highlighted in its ninety-five-year history .
One less book to clutter up the world .
How seductive are orchids ?
Connoisseurs spare nothing for a rare bloom—the issue in a battle between Florida , the Seminoles , and a man with a passion .
How does the painter David Salle know when to stop ?
How does the author know where to start ?
It ’ s all a question of process .
The author of “ Invisible Man ” revisits his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be a writer , not a black writer .
So he chose to live a lie rather than be trapped by the truth .

This week, The New Yorker will be celebrating its ninety-fifth anniversary. (The first issue of the magazine was published on February 21, 1925.) To mark this occasion, we’re bringing you a selection of twelve classic profiles from our archive—some well known, others less so, but all delightful. In “Joe Gould’s Secret,” Joseph Mitchell examines the life of a Greenwich Village bohemian who claims to be the author of the longest book ever written. In “Orchid Fever,” Susan Orlean writes about the horticulturalist John Laroche and his obsessive pursuit of rare orchids. (“To desire orchids is to have a desire that can never be fully requited. A collector who wants one of every orchid species will die before even coming close.”) In “The Duke in His Domain,” Truman Capote profiles the actor Marlon Brando on the set of his film “Sayonara,” in 1957. Mark Singer chronicles the artistry of the master illusionist and sleight-of-hand expert Ricky Jay, and Janet Malcolm describes the inventive and surprising work of the painter David Salle. In “Ghosts in the House,” Hilton Als recounts how the novelist Toni Morrison has influenced multiple generations of black writers. (“Love and disaster and all the other forms of human incident accumulate in Morrison’s fictional houses.”) In “Making a Noise in the World,” Brendan Gill examines the troubled life of the theatre and film actress Tallulah Bankhead. In “White Like Me,” Henry Louis Gates, Jr., considers the career of the legendary literary critic Anatole Broyard, who spent most of his life passing as white. George W. S. Trow visits with the former Vogue editor and style icon Diana Vreeland as she prepares a new costume exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Jervis Anderson follows the author Ralph Ellison as he takes a sojourn in his home town of Oklahoma City. In “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?,” Lillian Ross explores Manhattan with the renowned novelist Ernest Hemingway. (“ ‘After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead,’ he said moodily. ‘But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.’ ”) Finally, in “The Days of Duveen,” S. N. Behrman traces the iconic career of Joseph Duveen, one of the most influential art dealers of his time. Taken together, these pieces are an exhilarating reminder of the power of literary portraits. Ultimately, they help us see people, both strange and familiar, in expressive and moving ways—and they capture the scope and measure of the vivid, unforgettable personalities that The New Yorker has highlighted in its ninety-five-year history.
One less book to clutter up the world.
Photograph by Laura Wilson
How seductive are orchids? Connoisseurs spare nothing for a rare bloom—the issue in a battle between Florida, the Seminoles, and a man with a passion.
How does the painter David Salle know when to stop? How does the author know where to start? It’s all a question of process.
Photograph from Warner Bros. / Getty
Marlon Brando, on location.
Photograph by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation
Ricky Jay does closeup magic that flouts reality.
Photograph by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation
How Toni Morrison fostered a generation of black writers.
Tallulah Bankhead’s rise to fame.
The author of “Invisible Man” revisits his Oklahoma childhood.
Anatole Broyard wanted to be a writer, not a black writer. So he chose to live a lie rather than be trapped by the truth.
Diana Vreeland at work.
Illustration by Reginald Marsh
The moods of Ernest Hemingway.
A legendary art dealer and his clients.


newyorker--2020-02-16--Andy Gill and Gang of Four’s Dangerous Noise

For the first two minutes of Frank Ocean ’ s “ Futura Free , ” a slow , half-drowned beat runs beneath Ocean ’ s voice and piano .
It ’ s taken from Gang of Four ’ s “ Love Like Anthrax , ” recorded in 1979 for the band ’ s debut album , “ Entertainment !
” The sample comes from the point in the song right after Andy Gill toggles a two-note alarm on his guitar .
His tone softens and lifts up to make room for the entrance of Dave Allen ’ s bass and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s guitar has been groaning and screeching , like a fender pulled across a bollard , for ninety seconds , but with deliberation , as if his noise were fulfilling a single purpose .
The rhythm section starts playing a figure that sounds like dance music with some bits removed , spinning off its center like a dryer full of wet bath mats .
The song is bright and awake and not like any music that came before it , not really .
All three instruments are there in the Frank Ocean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only hear the drums .
“ I couldn ’ t hear our bit but pretend that I do when anybody asks , ” Burnham told me a few days after Gill died , from a respiratory illness , in London on February 1st .
“ I love Frank Ocean.
” It is proper that one of the most recent appearances of Gang of Four ’ s music is in a song by Frank Ocean , someone who has melted and reshaped what a pop star can do and say .
Ocean inverted the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gang of Four inverted the idea of what a guitar band with a vocalist might do .
Should a singer talk about feelings or theories ?
What are electric instruments for ?
Why is music amplified ?
Why do songs have so many notes ?
Why would four people go into a room and play together ?
Gill ’ s spoken-word part of “ Love Like Anthrax ” —one of two simultaneous vocals , inspired by the split-screen dual narrative of Jean-Luc Godard ’ s film “ Numéro Deux ” —gives us an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cultural moment and how Gang of Four reimagined it in 1979 .
“ I don ’ t think we ’ re saying there ’ s anything wrong with love , ” Gill says in the song .
“ We just don ’ t think that what goes on between two people should be shrouded with mystery.
” The day after Gill died , I spoke to the Gang of Four singer and lyricist Jon King .
“ ‘ Anthrax ’ was a breakthrough , ” he said .
“ We felt able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had discovered a sound.
” If a Frank Ocean fan , or anyone who doesn ’ t know Gang of Four , plays “ Anthrax , ” they will find the essence of Gill , in a performance as important as any other from that time .
Eulogizing music is another form of death , so put the song on at a high volume and wait for the nearest person to complain .
Feedback isn ’ t particularly novel now , and it was hardly new in 1979 , but “ Anthrax ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still astonishing .
The song begins with just a guitar , feeding back enthusiastically for a minute with no nods toward a song or any obvious musical frame .
It ’ s a happy and glorious and dangerous noise , and once the rest of the band leaps in it disappears .
When Gill ’ s guitar returns , it ’ s no more normative .
He just keeps squealing .
It ’ s a fabulous guitar song with no guitar part .
How ’ s that for minimalism ?
Gill presented his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Gang of Four , in an interview with Mary Harron for the British weekly Melody Maker , in May of 1979 .
“ Our attitudes have always been to strip down to the bare essentials , or try to , ” he said .
“ Most New Wave groups had a lot of sound textures going on simultaneously .
What we ’ re more interested in is being able to listen to a Gang of Four song and hear every single element—bass , drums , vocals , guitar—separate and equally dominant.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distance , involves more than a little technical modification .
King told me about the band ’ s collective desire to get away from the “ fatness ” of valve amps like those made by Marshall , which were popular with English bands in the seventies .
Gill used transistor amplifiers made by another English company , Carlsbro , which lent a cold clarity and nakedness to his playing .
“ That was very much one of Andy ’ s things , ” King said .
“ It ’ s very difficult to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing.
” That thing was very much up for grabs in 1978 , when what is widely called the post-punk period was gathering steam in England .
Inspired by the self-starters of punk , the second wave of bands had a double remit : love the past and sound nothing like it .
The critic Greil Marcus , in the liner notes of “ A Brief History of the Twentieth Century , ” Gang of Four ’ s first compilation album , describes this moment : “ The Gang of Four acted out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ picture of an individual who had discovered that ordinary life—the gestures of affection and resentment one made every day , the catchphrases one spoke every day as if one had invented them—is in fact sold and bought as grease for shopping and silence for the accumulation of capital and passivity.
” The band ’ s musical influences were not obscure : Allen loved the Meters ; Burnham praised the work of Simon Kirke , the drummer for Free ; and all the surviving members of Gang of Four mentioned Parliament and Funkadelic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Under a Groove , ” King said , “ You just lay down a groove and then you come in and out with something or other.
” This describes , precisely , one of the ideas behind “ Anthrax , ” mapped out on paper by Gill and King in 1977 , when they occupied “ adjacent rooms in a shitty house ” while attending the University of Leeds .
Two major inspirations for Gill specifically were Jimi Hendrix—especially his work on “ Voodoo Child ( Slight Return ) , ” which King @ @ @ @ @ @ @ endlessly ” —and Dr. Feelgood ’ s guitarist Wilko Johnson .
He ’ s not usually mentioned in American arguments about seventies rock , but Johnson is the biggest antecedent for Gill ’ s playing .
If the name rings no bells , listen to Gill ’ s playing on “ Outside the Trains Don ’ t Run on Time ” or , really , any Gang of Four song .
Then , watch a clip of Dr. Feelgood playing “ She Does It Right , ” live on the British television show @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1975 .
Johnson doesn ’ t play with a pick or use his fingertips like a folkie .
He whacks the guitar with the back of his hand , using fingernails but also the hand itself .
That attack , combined with his Fender Telecaster , created a sound that is as bracing and harsh as Gang of Four itself .
( If you want to keep learning about the band , don ’ t worry .
The rights to Gang of Four recordings were owned by Warner Bros. in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ song files down when the band could not reach an agreement with the company about a new contract last year .
The rights to the recordings have now reverted to the band , and the original recordings should be up on streaming platforms soon . )
When Gang of Four came to New York in 1979 and performed at Hurrah , they did a version of “ Damaged Goods , ” which was already enough of an underground hit that the audience sang along to most of it .
Included in The Pitchfork @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the band ’ s first single , there on the flip side of the first version of “ Anthrax , ” and it probably remains the band ’ s best-known song .
King likened the sound of it to the first-generation video game Breakout ( a bouncing ball chips away at a wall of bricks ) , which he and Gill played during the recording of “ Entertainment !
” In “ Damaged Goods , ” the bass and guitar toss small chords back and forth and then take off in opposite directions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the song ’ s melody and Gill hacking away like a sort of angry , rusty metronome .
The demystification of sex and love referered to on the B-side , in “ Love Like Anthrax , ” had already begun on the A-side : “ Sometimes I ’ m thinking that I love you / But I know it ’ s only lust .
”

Gang of Four inverted the idea of what a guitar band with a vocalist might do. Photograph by Adrian Boot / Urbanimage / Camera Press / Redux
For the first two minutes of Frank Ocean’s “Futura Free,” a slow, half-drowned beat runs beneath Ocean’s voice and piano. It’s taken from Gang of Four’s “Love Like Anthrax,” recorded in 1979 for the band’s début album, “Entertainment!” The sample comes from the point in the song right after Andy Gill toggles a two-note alarm on his guitar. His tone softens and lifts up to make room for the entrance of Dave Allen’s bass and Hugo Burnham’s drums. Gill’s guitar has been groaning and screeching, like a fender pulled across a bollard, for ninety seconds, but with deliberation, as if his noise were fulfilling a single purpose. The rhythm section starts playing a figure that sounds like dance music with some bits removed, spinning off its center like a dryer full of wet bath mats. The song is bright and awake and not like any music that came before it, not really.
All three instruments are there in the Frank Ocean sample, apparently, but you can only hear the drums. “I couldn’t hear our bit but pretend that I do when anybody asks,” Burnham told me a few days after Gill died, from a respiratory illness, in London, on February 1st. “I love Frank Ocean.”
It is proper that one of the most recent appearances of Gang of Four’s music is in a song by Frank Ocean, someone who has melted and reshaped what a pop star can do and say. Ocean inverted the role of the male singer just as Gang of Four inverted the idea of what a guitar band with a vocalist might do. Should a singer talk about feelings or theories? What are electric instruments for? Why is music amplified? Why do songs have so many notes? Why would four people go into a room and play together? Gill’s spoken-word part of “Love Like Anthrax”—one of two simultaneous vocals, inspired by the split-screen dual narrative of Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Numéro Deux”—gives us an answer, a way of understanding the cultural moment and how Gang of Four reimagined it in 1979. “I don’t think we’re saying there’s anything wrong with love,” Gill says in the song. “We just don’t think that what goes on between two people should be shrouded with mystery.”
The original lyrics to “Anthrax,” handwritten by Jon King. Photograph Courtesy Jon King
The day after Gill died, I spoke to the Gang of Four singer and lyricist Jon King. “ ‘Anthrax’ was a breakthrough,” he said. “We felt able to move on from verse-bridge-chorus songs. We had discovered a sound.”
If a Frank Ocean fan, or anyone who doesn’t know Gang of Four, plays “Anthrax,” they will find the essence of Gill, in a performance as important as any other from that time. Eulogizing music is another form of death, so put the song on at a high volume and wait for the nearest person to complain. Feedback isn’t particularly novel now, and it was hardly new in 1979, but “Anthrax” used it in a way that is still astonishing. The song begins with just a guitar, feeding back enthusiastically for a minute with no nods toward a song or any obvious musical frame. It’s a happy and glorious and dangerous noise, and once the rest of the band leaps in it disappears. When Gill’s guitar returns, it’s no more normative. He just keeps squealing. It’s a fabulous guitar song with no guitar part. How’s that for minimalism?
Gill presented his love of minimalism as a guiding principle for Gang of Four, in an interview with Mary Harron for the British weekly Melody Maker, in May of 1979. “Our attitudes have always been to strip down to the bare essentials, or try to,” he said. “Most New Wave groups had a lot of sound textures going on simultaneously. What we’re more interested in is being able to listen to a Gang of Four song and hear every single element—bass, drums, vocals, guitar—separate and equally dominant.”
Making a band legible, from any distance, involves more than a little technical modification. King told me about the band’s collective desire to get away from the “fatness” of valve amps like those made by Marshall, which were popular with English bands in the seventies. Gill used transistor amplifiers made by another English company, Carlsbro, which lent a cold clarity and nakedness to his playing. “That was very much one of Andy’s things,” King said. “It’s very difficult to be naked—it has to be about the thing.”
That thing was very much up for grabs in 1978, when what is widely called the post-punk period was gathering steam in England. Inspired by the self-starters of punk, the second wave of bands had a double remit: love the past and sound nothing like it. The critic Greil Marcus, in the liner notes of “A Brief History of the Twentieth Century,” Gang of Four’s first compilation album, describes this moment: “The Gang of Four acted out, and put into records, a picture of an individual who had discovered that ordinary life—the gestures of affection and resentment one made every day, the catchphrases one spoke every day as if one had invented them—is in fact sold and bought as grease for shopping and silence for the accumulation of capital and passivity.”
The band’s musical influences were not obscure: Allen loved the Meters; Burnham praised the work of Simon Kirke, the drummer for Free; and all the surviving members of Gang of Four mentioned Parliament and Funkadelic. Of Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove,” King said, “You just lay down a groove and then you come in and out with something or other.” This describes, precisely, one of the ideas behind “Anthrax,” mapped out on paper by Gill and King in 1977, when they occupied “adjacent rooms in a shitty house” while attending the University of Leeds.
Two major inspirations for Gill specifically were Jimi Hendrix—especially his work on “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” which King says he and Gill listened to “endlessly”—and Dr. Feelgood’s guitarist Wilko Johnson. He’s not usually mentioned in American arguments about seventies rock, but Johnson is the biggest antecedent for Gill’s playing. If the name rings no bells, listen to Gill’s playing on “Outside the Trains Don’t Run on Time” or, really, any Gang of Four song. Then, watch a clip of Dr. Feelgood playing “She Does It Right,” live on the British television show “Old Grey Whistle Test,” in 1975. Johnson doesn’t play with a pick or use his fingertips like a folkie. He whacks the guitar with the back of his hand, using fingernails but also the hand itself. That attack, combined with his Fender Telecaster, created a sound that is as bracing and harsh as Gang of Four itself. (If you want to keep learning about the band, don’t worry. The rights to Gang of Four recordings were owned by Warner Bros. in the United States, and the label took the song files down when the band could not reach an agreement with the company about a new contract last year. The rights to the recordings have now reverted to the band, and the original recordings should be up on streaming platforms soon.)
When Gang of Four came to New York in 1979 and performed at Hurrah, they did a version of “Damaged Goods,” which was already enough of an underground hit that the audience sang along to most of it. Included in “The Pitchfork 500,” “Damaged Goods” was the band’s first single, there on the flip side of the first version of “Anthrax,” and it probably remains the band’s best-known song. King likened the sound of it to the first-generation video game Breakout (a bouncing ball chips away at a wall of bricks), which he and Gill played during the recording of “Entertainment!” In “Damaged Goods,” the bass and guitar toss small chords back and forth and then take off in opposite directions, with Allen playing what sounds like the song’s melody and Gill hacking away like a sort of angry, rusty metronome. The demystification of sex and love referred to on the B-side, in “Love Like Anthrax,” had already begun on the A-side: “Sometimes I’m thinking that I love you / But I know it’s only lust.”