newyorker--2020-05-04--Lorraine Hansberry’s Roving Global Vision

Since early April , when the great literary critic and English professor Cheryl A .
Wall died , I have been thinking about the last book she published , “ On Freedom and the Will to Adorn , ” about the African-American essay tradition .
Wall was one of the foremost scholars and interpreters of the work of Zora Neale Hurston , and , in “ On Freedom , ” Wall latches on to Hurston ’ s assertion that the “ will to adorn ” —a tendency toward linguistic flourish , even under duress—is an important aspect of “ Negro @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essay has often fulfilled two barely extricable purposes : to argue for political , economic , social , racial , and sexual liberation , and to satisfy a writer ’ s urge for self-expression through aesthetics .
Wall ’ s insight goes beyond the essay ; it ’ s more like an unveiling of the impulses—sometimes harmonious , sometimes dissonant—that come together to make art of any kind that is anchored in place and time but can also move past those parameters .
There may be no better example of this capacity in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and art of the playwright Lorraine Hansberry , who died in 1965 , at the age of thirty-four , but left behind enough genius for lovers of literature to follow like a trail of generous crumbs .
( May 19th will mark the ninetieth anniversary of Hansberry ’ s birth . )
Even before her sparkling career as a playwright began , Hansberry walked a political-artistic tightrope , making personal and creative adjustments in order to achieve the kind of balance that Wall describes .
In her early twenties , having just arrived @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she published poems in radical journals ; worked as a journalist for Freedom , a black leftist newspaper published by the actor and singer Paul Robeson ; and studied with W. E. B .
Du Bois , at the Jefferson School of Social Science .
She was beginning to hone her lifelong leftward politics into a roving , endlessly empathetic global vision .
Around that time—according to “ Looking for Lorraine : The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry , ” Imani Perry ’ s intimate , ruminative book , from 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sent a letter to her boyfriend , Robert Nemiroff , whom she would later marry .
The letter ended with a tellingly determined manifesto : Hansberry was not only personally ambitious but also hoped to merge her aesthetic and political concerns , which had grown together like a tree with twin trunks—its highest branches intermingled , its sustenance coursing through a mutual system of roots .
Perry ’ s book is an elegant , softly subjective rereading of the facts of Hansberry ’ s life .
If Hansberry ’ s own story is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her most perceptive , unabashedly biased critic , helping to reiterate and build on her themes , and to make her performance live again .
“ Looking for Lorraine ” tunnels deep into Hansberry ’ s psyche , showing how the dissonance of her youth yielded a poised artist , cut down too early by illness .
Hansberry had a relatively bourgeois , liberal , middle-class upbringing , in Chicago , but it was ringed by violence .
When her father , a real-estate entrepreneur , bought a house in a white neighborhood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cement block thrown through their front window ; it just missed Lorraine ’ s head , and lodged itself into a wall .
If Perry has one persistent obsession , it is how , after this harrowing moment , Hansberry struggled to synthesize her attraction to politics , her deeply felt humanism , and her native interest in beauty : how she learned to move from helpless frustration to a contemplation of the earth ’ s magnificence in one mental stroke .
“ There were her politics , centered on the poor , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Perry writes , “ and there was her grasping at the interior life.
” In 1959 , Hansberry had an astounding success , with “ A Raisin in the Sun , ” becoming the first black woman to have a play début on Broadway .
The plot centers on a Chicago family ’ s complications in moving to an all-white neighborhood .
It satisfied every requirement of a “ well made ” domestic drama , setting its characters ’ generational , religious , and political divisions so artfully against one another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loss of his family inheritance—feels like a glimpse beyond setting and character and into the country ’ s future of commingled hopes and desires .
After “ Raisin ” ’ s run , Hansberry wrote a post-apocalyptic fantasy called “ What Use Are Flowers ?
” She conceived it as a television special , but decided to make it a play instead .
Parts of it have been adapted for radio and staged readings , and some of its text was used in “ To Be Young , Gifted and Black , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nemiroff .
To read “ Flowers ” now—alongside other post- “ Raisin ” works , such as “ Les Blancs ” and “ The Drinking Gourd , ” all of which , along with “ Flowers , ” are collected in a book called “ Les Blancs : The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry , ” from 1972—is to be reminded that , for Hansberry , “ Raisin ” was a beginning , not an end .
The theatre , with its urge to make the interior visible , and to force @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of confrontation , was a perfect vehicle for her to develop both her politics and her art .
“ Flowers ” begins in a bleak landscape , empty except for a group of scantily clothed kids .
They are prelingual , and look hungry .
It ’ s unclear what has happened to civilization , but the clear reference—given the time , and Hansberry ’ s global political concerns—is to the bomb .
Hansberry had watched Du Bois , her mentor and a family friend , get arrested and indicted after starting a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ostracized in polite circles , both black and white , and was labelled a Soviet agent .
Hansberry ’ s admiration for Du Bois was total .
In a journal entry , she called him “ freedom ’ s passion , refined and organized.
” That formulation sounds like an eerie anticipation of Wall ’ s : Du Bois ’ s 1903 book , “ The Souls of Black Folk , ” in which he brought together social science , reportage , music criticism , and even fiction , is a cornerstone of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ used his peerless education , personal fastidiousness , and artistic flair as a conduit for his passions , not an excuse to dampen them in the name of respectability .
He had paved a road that Hansberry hoped to travel .
In “ Flowers , ” the kids kill an animal and fight over the body .
Nobody coöperates ; it ’ s a microcosm of Hobbes ’ s “ war of all against all.
” A struggle ensues , and , Hansberry notes in her stage directions , “ those who are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ruthlessness and set it loose as the highest law .

Since early April, when the great literary critic and English professor Cheryl A. Wall died, I have been thinking about the last book she published, “On Freedom and the Will to Adorn,” about the African-American essay tradition. Wall was one of the foremost scholars and interpreters of the work of Zora Neale Hurston, and, in “On Freedom,” Wall latches on to Hurston’s assertion that the “will to adorn”—a tendency toward linguistic flourish, even under duress—is an important aspect of “Negro expression.” Wall believed that the black essay has often fulfilled two barely extricable purposes: to argue for political, economic, social, racial, and sexual liberation, and to satisfy a writer’s urge for self-expression through aesthetics.
Wall’s insight goes beyond the essay; it’s more like an unveiling of the impulses—sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant—that come together to make art of any kind that is anchored in place and time but can also move past those parameters. There may be no better example of this capacity in the modern American theatre than the life and art of the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who died in 1965, at the age of thirty-four, but left behind enough genius for lovers of literature to follow like a trail of generous crumbs. (May 19th will mark the ninetieth anniversary of Hansberry’s birth.)
Even before her sparkling career as a playwright began, Hansberry walked a political-artistic tightrope, making personal and creative adjustments in order to achieve the kind of balance that Wall describes. In her early twenties, having just arrived in New York from the Midwest, she published poems in radical journals; worked as a journalist for Freedom, a black leftist newspaper published by the actor and singer Paul Robeson; and studied with W. E. B. Du Bois, at the Jefferson School of Social Science. She was beginning to hone her lifelong leftward politics into a roving, endlessly empathetic global vision.
Around that time—according to “Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry,” Imani Perry’s intimate, ruminative book, from 2018, more documentary portrait than strict biography—Hansberry sent a letter to her boyfriend, Robert Nemiroff, whom she would later marry. The letter ended with a tellingly determined manifesto:
1. I am a writer. I am going to write.
2. I am going to become a writer.
3. Any real contribution I can make to the movement can only be the result of a disciplined life. I am going to institute discipline in my life.
4. I can paint. I am going to paint.
The END
Hansberry was not only personally ambitious but also hoped to merge her aesthetic and political concerns, which had grown together like a tree with twin trunks—its highest branches intermingled, its sustenance coursing through a mutual system of roots.
Perry’s book is an elegant, softly subjective rereading of the facts of Hansberry’s life. If Hansberry’s own story is a kind of drama, Perry is her most perceptive, unabashedly biased critic, helping to reiterate and build on her themes, and to make her performance live again. “Looking for Lorraine” tunnels deep into Hansberry’s psyche, showing how the dissonance of her youth yielded a poised artist, cut down too early by illness. Hansberry had a relatively bourgeois, liberal, middle-class upbringing, in Chicago, but it was ringed by violence. When her father, a real-estate entrepreneur, bought a house in a white neighborhood, the family was greeted with a cement block thrown through their front window; it just missed Lorraine’s head, and lodged itself into a wall.
If Perry has one persistent obsession, it is how, after this harrowing moment, Hansberry struggled to synthesize her attraction to politics, her deeply felt humanism, and her native interest in beauty: how she learned to move from helpless frustration to a contemplation of the earth’s magnificence in one mental stroke. “There were her politics, centered on the poor, the marginal, the oppressed and outsiders,” Perry writes, “and there was her grasping at the interior life.”
In 1959, Hansberry had an astounding success, with “A Raisin in the Sun,” becoming the first black woman to have a play début on Broadway. The plot centers on a Chicago family’s complications in moving to an all-white neighborhood. It satisfied every requirement of a “well made” domestic drama, setting its characters’ generational, religious, and political divisions so artfully against one another that the eventual climax—Walter Younger’s loss of his family inheritance—feels like a glimpse beyond setting and character and into the country’s future of commingled hopes and desires.
After “Raisin” ’s run, Hansberry wrote a post-apocalyptic fantasy called “What Use Are Flowers?” She conceived it as a television special, but decided to make it a play instead. Parts of it have been adapted for radio and staged readings, and some of its text was used in “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” the posthumous play that was edited by Nemiroff. To read “Flowers” now—alongside other post-“Raisin” works, such as “Les Blancs” and “The Drinking Gourd,” all of which, along with “Flowers,” are collected in a book called “Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry,” from 1972—is to be reminded that, for Hansberry, “Raisin” was a beginning, not an end. The theatre, with its urge to make the interior visible, and to force contradictions through the refiner’s fire of confrontation, was a perfect vehicle for her to develop both her politics and her art.
“Flowers” begins in a bleak landscape, empty except for a group of scantily clothed kids. They are prelingual, and look hungry. It’s unclear what has happened to civilization, but the clear reference—given the time, and Hansberry’s global political concerns—is to the bomb. Hansberry had watched Du Bois, her mentor and a family friend, get arrested and indicted after starting a petition against nuclear weapons. He was ostracized in polite circles, both black and white, and was labelled a Soviet agent.
Hansberry’s admiration for Du Bois was total. In a journal entry, she called him “freedom’s passion, refined and organized.” That formulation sounds like an eerie anticipation of Wall’s: Du Bois’s 1903 book, “The Souls of Black Folk,” in which he brought together social science, reportage, music criticism, and even fiction, is a cornerstone of the black essay tradition. He had used his peerless education, personal fastidiousness, and artistic flair as a conduit for his passions, not an excuse to dampen them in the name of respectability. He had paved a road that Hansberry hoped to travel.
In “Flowers,” the kids kill an animal and fight over the body. Nobody coöperates; it’s a microcosm of Hobbes’s “war of all against all.” A struggle ensues, and, Hansberry notes in her stage directions, “those who are strongest triumph.” Apocalypse has exposed human ruthlessness and set it loose as the highest law.
Into this brutal scene enters a man who describes himself as a hermit. He walked into the woods twenty years ago and is now returning to a nightmare. Once he realizes what has happened, he makes the children his project. He was an English teacher in the old world. He says of the people he left behind, all of whom, except for these children, are now presumably dead, “What a strange tribe they were! Lunatics and heroes all!” The children, he learns, were brought here by a man and a woman who hoped, perhaps, that they would survive and live to propagate the species. (Awkwardly, there’s only one girl among them.) The hermit teaches the children to speak, introducing them to simple concepts, one by one.
But abstractions are difficult. The hermit strains, especially, to explain what it means to “use” something. Soon, the organs of civilization start to return. One kid learns to speak passably well. Another “invents” the wheel. Violence still breaks out, but beneath it hope peeks through. There’s a question that the hermit never successfully answers, though—one that seems as relevant today, as we walk through our own real-life apocalypse, as in this barren imagined landscape. One child asks what “use” flowers have—why beauty? The hermit’s struggle to answer feels like the whole agony of creation. The stakes seem absurdly high, but it’s a plausible diagnosis of the human problem, resolvable only by keeping one eye on surfaces and the other on the spirit: imagine or die. ♦


newyorker--2020-05-04--Reinventing Grief in an Era of Enforced Isolation

Father Michael , a priest my family has never met , in a city we never identified , gave my father a version of the last rites over the telephone on the night of April 4th .
My father , John Collins , had received a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia in January .
After spending nearly two months undergoing chemotherapy at Duke University Medical Center , in Durham , North Carolina , he was finally discharged from the hospital in mid-March , just as the coronavirus pandemic broke out .
He and my mother , Sue , returned to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scrambling .
There were cancelled appointments , appointments rescheduled for Zoom ; Zoom appointments cancelled , too , when my father ’ s new , outpatient doctors , having determined that it was too risky for him to continue commuting to Durham , acknowledged that they couldn ’ t very well devise a treatment plan without being able to physically examine him .
The coronavirus may have accelerated his decline , or it may not have .
Leukemia was the disease at fault .
Still , the demands on medical personnel , amid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home dangerous and dying at home unworkable .
On the afternoon of April 3rd , my father entered a hospice center .
He had not been a churchgoer in recent years , and hadn ’ t attended a Catholic church since adolescence .
Still , we knew that last rites were something he wanted , so we tried hard to make it happen .
In the course of the evening and the next day , my mother called “ a zillion friends ” to try to rustle up a Catholic officiant .
No @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s sister-in-law ’ s acquaintance finally found a willing Father Michael somewhere in California .
“ Just heard from one priest who does not know how to do FaceTime , ” the friend ’ s sister-in-law texted .
“ He ’ s now checking with another priest .
If he ’ s tech savvy , he can do all except the anointing.
” I learned about this when I woke up in Paris on April 5th and checked my WhatsApp messages .
“ Sorry you missed it , but had to take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my mother had written , referring to the priest , at 2:39 A.M .
I should have had my ringer on .
I had also missed a video call at 6:11 , and one at 6:13 .
I called my mother at 6:19 , and she told me that my father had died .
It took me a few minutes to switch on the light in my bedroom , during which time I appeared to my mother in the form of a pitch-black rectangle .
She asked if I wanted to see him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I did , I said yes .
First , she aimed the camera at the door ( “ Mom , that ’ s the door ” ) , and then she turned it toward the bed , where my father ’ s body lay .
The bad lighting and the slow connection produced greenish , unfiltered alloys of pixel and flesh .
Despite having lived abroad for a decade , I ’ d always thought of FaceTime as a weak substitute for first-order interaction , whether in person or in writing .
Like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ avoided except when there were no other decent options .
Better to have the real thing , less frequently , than to settle for constant interruptions and glitches .
Video calls are unsatisfying not just because of the lack of touch but because they require mutual active presence .
Conversation is only a part of companionship .
It ’ s hard to just be when you ’ re on a call , hard to see when you ’ re constantly looking .
Because of the coronavirus , I was quarantined in France .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a prognosis , in early March , my father ’ s doctors had guessed that he had somewhere between a year and eighteen months left to live .
I had a ticket home for March 19th , but , after the pandemic hit , we decided to postpone the visit .
Soon , though , it became clear that my father ’ s condition was deteriorating .
The doctors could see it in his blood-cell counts , but I understood that he was dying when , one afternoon , my kids demanded that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he often did for them on FaceTime .
After a knockout performance—elbows flapping , knees knocking , bent low enough that he could reach down and slap the floor—he collapsed back into his deck chair , and said that he needed to sleep .
I tried to find a way to join him , my mother , and my brother , who lives in Wilmington with his wife and young children .
One flight a day was still operating from Paris to the United States .
On April 4th , it was headed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it was going to J.F.K.
, landing in New York in the late afternoon .
To get to Wilmington , I would then either rent a car and drive ten hours or spend the night in a hotel , take a taxi to LaGuardia the next morning , and catch two more flights .
In the end , these were fantasy itineraries , dark mirrors of the vacations that people have passed the pandemic imagining in extravagant detail , as a way to transcend confinement and the powerlessness that comes with it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in time to see my father , I might transmit the coronavirus to my mother , who is seventy , or to other people .
I might get stranded , or sick myself , in a country where I don ’ t have health insurance .
Staying in Paris went against all my instincts , but going seemed foolhardy .
The hospice was in lockdown , but it allowed immediate family members to visit at the end of life .
A mercy , and a privilege : my father wouldn ’ t die @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my mother and brother sat at his bedside , occasionally putting an iPhone close to his right ear , the good one , so that I could talk to him .
This was a warm moment , the best simulacrum of togetherness that we could create .
But it was also distressing for me , because my father wasn ’ t responding , and my mother and brother couldn ’ t tell when I was done trying to communicate .
I listened while Dad gasped for breath , waiting for someone to reclaim @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the dying by device are still being written .
Do you mute something like that if you can ?
The screen , as screens do , kept framing little pictures—grainy grotesques that I wished I could unsee .
Still , I eventually took a screenshot , because I was worried about forgetting all the things that , not being there , I hadn ’ t had a chance to internalize .
It showed my dad , his mouth bruised and bleeding a little , dressed in a weirdly pretty white gown with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chrysanthemums .
He was lying in a bed with handles .
Three electrical outlets , one of them red , were visible above his head .
The image kept popping up in my camera roll every time I tried to send a message or post something .
I wanted to delete it , but that felt like another kind of desecration .
I ended up e-mailing it to myself , just to get it off my phone , and putting it in an unnamed folder .
As I spoke to my mother on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nurse came into the room to tell her that my father ’ s possessions—white socks , a phone charger—would be returned to her .
The nurse also presented her with a list of undertakers .
I listened in , looking , again , at some random door .
“ They ’ re awesome , they did my dad , ” the nurse ’ s disembodied voice said , of one mortuary .
Unable to see her face , I couldn ’ t decide what to make of that , so , tuning out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the space of three thumb scrolls , my conversations with my dad had gone from “ I will stand , this will pass and we will embrace again before you know it ” to “ I hit my head—so I am in the / JWejhosp.
” The final screen showed two pictures I had sent him of my kids , marked “ seen ” by pairs of blue checks .

As I spoke to my mother on the morning of the fifth, a nurse came into the room to tell her that my father’s possessions—white socks, a phone charger—would be returned to her. The nurse also presented her with a list of undertakers. I listened in, looking, again, at some random door. “They’re awesome, they did my dad,” the nurse’s disembodied voice said, of one mortuary. Unable to see her face, I couldn’t decide what to make of that, so, tuning out, I wandered onto WhatsApp. In the space of three thumb scrolls, my conversations with my dad had gone from “I will stand, this will pass and we will embrace again before you know it” to “I hit my head—so I am in the / JWejhosp.” The final screen showed two pictures I had sent him of my kids, marked “seen” by pairs of blue checks.
For many years, Dad wrote me letters. He was a criminal-defense lawyer, and they invariably came on his office letterhead, written in black ink and posted in a business envelope with an American-flag stamp. He had beautiful, surprising handwriting that, with its geometric strokes and irregular vowels (he used uppercase and lowercase “E”s interchangeably, varying their size to signal capitalization), seemed to hint at a bohemian sensibility that he never explored in life. At some point, I stopped responding to his letters, insisting that the mail was inefficient. He was uninterested in, and even hostile to, technology. He liked physical things: one client, a commercial fisherman, used to pay him in grouper and shrimp. Until very recently, my father didn’t own a cell phone, and, even once he did, he rarely had it with him. This hurt me, because I thought that, in rejecting e-mailing and texting and all the other things that humans have created to facilitate communication at a distance, he was rejecting me.
The morning of his death, after I hung up with my mother, I typed his name into the search bar in my Gmail. Twenty-two messages came up, more than I’d expected. All of them were written between 2009 and 2011. I’d set up an account for him as a Christmas present, writing, “Give this a try, if you can stand it? There are so many things I’d love to share with you that just fall through the cracks, for lack of anywhere to send them.” This was sort of like buying my dad a gift certificate to a restaurant that served food he hated and then inviting him out to dinner. But, for a while, he gave it a shot. In person, we had a game where we liked to say Camilla Parker Bowles’s name with the emphasis on different syllables: Camilla Par-ker Bowles, Ca-mill-a Parker Bowles, Camilla Parker Bowles. Once, I sent him a link to a Daily Mail article about how she had broken her leg by stumbling into a rabbit hole while hill walking in Scotland. “It is a bit worrisome!” he wrote. “However, most rabbits live in a shallow hill called a form. Shrubs, leaves, grasses, or weeds hide the BOWL-shaped form from sight. So this misadventure may have been predestined by our beloved duchess’s last name. Cheerio.”
My father knew every state nickname, team mascot, and national capital, and passed that knowledge on to his children, along with a slew of what he proudly acknowledged were useless facts. One of his e-mails to me expressed delight at the existence of Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano that was, at the time, covering much of northern Europe in an ash cloud. An alnager, he wanted me to know, was a person whose job it was to inspect and certify woollens.
Social distancing would, I knew, preclude a traditional funeral. I was desperate to share something of my dad, to try to make it so that he didn’t disappear through a trapdoor of global disorder. I went on Twitter and posted a picture of him giving a speech at my wedding, along with one of my husband and me looking back at him. Because my father didn’t have the cloud to do his remembering for him, he saved things. In the picture, he’s holding a laminated piece of loose-leaf paper: a poem that he’d dug up, written by me in the first grade, declaring that I wanted to travel the world and see “all the countries, Romania, Greece, and all.”
On Twitter, I wrote that for decades he had carried in his pocket a lucky purple rock I’d given him; that he’d recorded every species of bird he ever saw, beginning with a red-winged blackbird at Alley Pond Park, in Queens, when he was fourteen; that he’d stopped drinking at the age of sixty-nine. These were some of the things that, under normal circumstances, I would like to have said in front of a packed church. I didn’t have enough space to explain that, in one of the e-mails I’d retrieved, he talked about how much he loved his work, quoting the passage in “The Catcher in the Rye” in which Holden Caulfield pledges to “catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff.” He had written, “I am the Catcher in the Rye for my clients; I hope.”
Hundreds of kind people replied—friends, professional acquaintances, complete strangers. A John Collins in Nottingham, England, wrote, “For obvious reasons, this tweet stopped me in my tracks when I saw it today. I’m really sorry to hear of your loss.” A reporter from the Times offered her condolences, adding a link to a story she’d written about the transformation of mourning during the pandemic. “We may be about to confront death on a scale few of us have ever known, while being stripped of time-honored consolations: wakes, funerals, shivas,” it read. “When the hour calls for togetherness, we will be apart.” It felt strange knowing that my family and I were now members of a “vanguard” that we’d never aspired to join, reinventing grief in an era of enforced isolation. An article in Le Monde about the phenomenon quoted Émile Durkheim saying that “any communion of consciousness, in whatever form it takes place, enhances social vitality.” That seemed positive, plus we’d decided that, in our new role as bereavement disrupters, we could dispense with the hearse and, for that matter, an officiant.
I remembered how tenderly my father spoke at his own mother’s funeral Mass, describing her in a shirtwaist dress, greeting him when he came home from school. The Church rituals had left my brother, more familiar with cremation than with Catholicism, puzzled. “Is that Grandma?” he’d asked, as the priest walked down the aisle swinging a thurible. My mother was sad that she wouldn’t get to meet all the strangers—people from the courthouse, people he’d got out of jail—who had been a part of my father’s life. She and my brother buried him on Good Friday, just the two of them and the awesome undertaker. I put on a silk blouse and dialled in with my husband. My sister-in-law didn’t go, because they couldn’t get a babysitter.
“Trust me, Margherite—I’m an architect.” Cartoon by Victoria Roberts Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Diseases don’t have personalities—my father’s leukemia wasn’t any more “aggressive” than it was quietly efficient—but, if they did, the coronavirus would be a bureaucrat. It is not an equalizer, as we’ve seen from the obscene rates of infection and death among African-Americans; nor is it a unifier, as we’ve seen from David Geffen’s drone selfie of his yacht. The pandemic is capricious. Even if it doesn’t kill you, it can wield power over your life in a range of ways, from bankrupting you to making you gain five pounds. It isn’t above the petty insult, and it doesn’t care about your special case.
Parents die every day, and often their children don’t get to be there with them. It’s a fluke that I ended up watching my father die on FaceTime, whereas it’s policy that millions of people who don’t have the money or the right passport are forced to be separated from their loved ones for years, or even lifetimes. Some of the free-floating grief that the coronavirus has unleashed among the otherwise rich, safe, and secure is actually grievance: the computer’s saying no, the universe won’t make an exception no matter what you try.
I worry about my mother, drawing comfort from the potted plants that friends are leaving on her porch—Mexican heather; rosemary, for remembrance. She went from living with her parents and eight siblings to a college dormitory, and then directly into marriage. For the first time in her life, she’s alone, in a house full of orchids. My father is buried in a cemetery in their neighborhood. When I was a kid, we rode bikes there, bringing plastic sleeves full of sweating bread to feed to the ducks, stuffing our pockets with feathers and with artificial flowers that had blown off the gravestones. My mother has been walking over to the cemetery in the afternoons to “say hi” to Dad. A few days after the burial, as she approached, she saw an unfamiliar man standing near my father’s grave. By the time she reached it, he had got back in his car. She introduced herself through the open window. The man, seeming uncomfortable, didn’t give his name, saying only that my father had known and helped his kids. He drove off before my mother could learn more. But, by being there, alone and presumed unseen, he made our family feel that my father might have had a proper sendoff in ways that we haven’t yet fathomed.
My father’s death was complicated by the coronavirus, not caused by it. Losing someone you love in the midst of a pandemic that has taken more than two hundred thousand lives is a great lesson in proportion. In a way, mourning under quarantine has a sense to it. Pain is cruel because it doesn’t stop the world from turning, but, for now, the world has stopped turning, relative to its usual pace. I have quiet in which to remember my father, at a moment when the mention of death isn’t going to upset anyone’s dinner party. My friends and family have the time to send their stories (“Remember when he accidentally cut into my wedding cake?”), their impressions (“Your Dad was like the American you hope to meet before you come to America”), their photos (“Mr. Collins—Karaoke.jpeg”). My husband, Olivier, showed me a twenty-third e-mail. My father had sent it to him, nearly a decade ago, when we had briefly broken up. “Olivier, I am sorry for the recent troubles in your and Lauren’s lives,” he had written. “You are a wonderful man in your own right. You are a wonderful man as Lauren’s companion. I hope after frank discussion you will be able to renew your lives together with fresh visions and goals.”


The Mail

It is a testament to Jane Mayer ’ s peerless journalism that , in her article about Mitch McConnell , Mayer tries , again and again , to find someone who actually likes him ( “ Enabler-in-Chief , ” April 20th ) .
She searches for evidence that he possesses any warmth , compassion , integrity , or fairness .
The fact that not one of his three daughters has anything to say about him , in the twilight of his life and in a piece revealing his true legacy , speaks volumes about the man .
In Mayer ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see that McConnell wears a hard , closed shell , and that there is nothing inside .
Before picking up Nick Paumgarten ’ s article about the financial crisis caused by COVID-19 , I was a mild-mannered mother of two , scanning the clearance section of JCrew.com ( “ The Price of a Pandemic , ” April 20th ) .
Now I want blood !
Compared with these finance guys , the robber barons of the past look like Johnny Appleseed .
By Paumgarten ’ s account , many of today ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic .
Paumgarten writes that “ the basis of the financial markets , and of arguments about them , is numbers—data and their deployments.
” But the basis of today ’ s financial markets seems to be unchecked avarice devoid of oversight .
One thing is certain : we need more women in leadership roles in industry .
The toxic masculinity Paumgarten describes is economically and politically devastating .
My mother ’ s love for trashy reality TV always baffled me , until she convinced me to watch “ Tiger King ” ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As Doreen St. Félix describes , viewers under quarantine have been glued to the show , which is undoubtedly crass and culturally insensitive .
St. Félix poses an explanation for the attraction : “ Tiger King ” offers “ an outlet for the id now that the ego is under siege.
” For me , the series satisfies a different kind of craving .
It is a slow and shocking train wreck , and as we sit inside , with our reality collapsing around us , it is comforting to watch another reality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tiger King , ” very simply , helps us feel better about our own lives , offering a twisted sense of satisfaction for these dark times .
When I read Bill Buford ’ s article about a boulangerie in Lyon , and the small-batch flour that Bob , its baker , used in his excellent bread , I was reminded of the five years that my wife and I spent in the area ( “ Good Bread , ” April 13th ) .
The provincial portions of France that still vibrate with local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ la France profonde , or Deep France , and the Auvergne region is probably its best example .
Auvergne ’ s largest city , Clermont-Ferrand , is the birthplace of Michelin , which produces both tires and the famous bible of gastronomy .
I worked for the company , and we lived in an apartment in central Clermont-Ferrand , opposite a cathedral made from volcanic rock , which is also the mystical source of the soil that enriched Bob ’ s baguettes .
I would stop at a boulangerie each morning to collect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the oven .
I don ’ t know whether that bread was made from the same flour as Bob ’ s , but Buford ’ s piece brought back the frisson of joy I experienced every day as I walked to work , smiling at how good simple food can taste .
Letters should be sent with the writer ’ s name , address , and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail @ newyorker.com .
Letters may be edited for length and clarity , and may be published in any medium @ @ @ @ @ @ @ volume of correspondence we can not reply to every letter .

Who Is Mitch MCConnell?
It is a testament to Jane Mayer’s peerless journalism that, in her article about Mitch McConnell, Mayer tries, again and again, to find someone who actually likes him (“Enabler-in-Chief,” April 20th). She searches for evidence that he possesses any warmth, compassion, integrity, or fairness. The fact that not one of his three daughters has anything to say about him, in the twilight of his life and in a piece revealing his true legacy, speaks volumes about the man. In Mayer’s withering profile, we come to see that McConnell wears a hard, closed shell, and that there is nothing inside.
Tom Seigel
Weston, Conn.
Pandemic Profiteers
Before picking up Nick Paumgarten’s article about the financial crisis caused by COVID-19, I was a mild-mannered mother of two, scanning the clearance section of JCrew.com (“The Price of a Pandemic,” April 20th). Now I want blood! Compared with these finance guys, the robber barons of the past look like Johnny Appleseed. By Paumgarten’s account, many of today’s investors have revelled in profiteering off the pandemic. Paumgarten writes that “the basis of the financial markets, and of arguments about them, is numbers—data and their deployments.” But the basis of today’s financial markets seems to be unchecked avarice devoid of oversight. One thing is certain: we need more women in leadership roles in industry. The toxic masculinity Paumgarten describes is economically and politically devastating.
Clare Fader
Winston-Salem, N.C.
Tiger, Tiger
My mother’s love for trashy reality TV always baffled me, until she convinced me to watch “Tiger King” (On Television, April 13th). As Doreen St. Félix describes, viewers under quarantine have been glued to the show, which is undoubtedly crass and culturally insensitive. St. Félix poses an explanation for the attraction: “Tiger King” offers “an outlet for the id now that the ego is under siege.” For me, the series satisfies a different kind of craving. It is a slow and shocking train wreck, and as we sit inside, with our reality collapsing around us, it is comforting to watch another reality destroy itself even more fully. “Tiger King,” very simply, helps us feel better about our own lives, offering a twisted sense of satisfaction for these dark times.
Lily Cratsley
Leominster, Mass.
La France Profonde
When I read Bill Buford’s article about a boulangerie in Lyon, and the small-batch flour that Bob, its baker, used in his excellent bread, I was reminded of the five years that my wife and I spent in the area (“Good Bread,” April 13th). The provincial portions of France that still vibrate with local traditions and values are referred to as la France profonde, or Deep France, and the Auvergne region is probably its best example. Auvergne’s largest city, Clermont-Ferrand, is the birthplace of Michelin, which produces both tires and the famous bible of gastronomy. I worked for the company, and we lived in an apartment in central Clermont-Ferrand, opposite a cathedral made from volcanic rock, which is also the mystical source of the soil that enriched Bob’s baguettes. I would stop at a boulangerie each morning to collect a pain au chocolat, still warm from the oven. I don’t know whether that bread was made from the same flour as Bob’s, but Buford’s piece brought back the frisson of joy I experienced every day as I walked to work, smiling at how good simple food can taste.
Michael Fanning
Mt. Pleasant, S.C.
•
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.


newyorker--2020-05-04--Slide Show: New Yorker Cartoons May 11, 2020

“ I got you a rat to remind you of the subway .
”

“Remember, as soon as his boss joins the videoconference, it’s showtime.”
Cartoon by Elisabeth McNair


newyorker--2020-05-04--Why Weren’t We Ready for the Coronavirus?

In 2006 , the idea that an unknown virus might spill out of some wild animal into humans , achieving person-to-person transmission and causing a global pandemic , seemed a distant prospect to most people .
As an engaging science-fiction scare , it ranked somewhere beneath “ Alien : Resurrection.
” But Ali S. Khan , of the National Center for Zoonotic , Vector-Borne , and Enteric Diseases , was tasked with dreaming that nightmare by daylight .
NCZVED ( pronounced “ N .
C. Zved , ” according to Khan ) , part of the Centers for Disease Control @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gray brick building , behind locked gates and locked doors in the C.D.C.
’ s compound on Clifton Road , six miles northeast of downtown Atlanta .
During a two-day visit that year , I worked my way along the NCZVED corridors , interviewing scientists who knew all about Ebola viruses ( yes , there are more than one ) and their lethal cousin Marburg ; about West Nile virus in the Bronx and Sin Nombre virus in Arizona ; about simian foamy virus in Bali , which is carried by temple monkeys @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which reached Illinois in giant Gambian rats sold as pets ; about Junin virus in Argentina and Machupo virus in Bolivia ; about Lassa virus in West Africa , Nipah virus in Malaysia , Hendra virus in Australia , and rabies everywhere .
All these viruses are zoonotic , meaning that they can pass from animals to people .
Most of them , once in a human body , cause mayhem .
Some of them also transmit well among people , bursting into local outbreaks that may kill hundreds .
They are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ systems ; they emerge unpredictably and are difficult to treat ; and they can be especially dangerous , as reflected in the name of the branch within NCZVED that studied them—Special Pathogens .
For these reasons , some scientists and public-health experts , including Ali Khan , find the viruses an irresistible challenge .
“ It ’ s because they keep you on your toes , ” he told me .
On the second day of my visit , amid the intriguingly gruesome briefings , Khan took me out for sushi .
Khan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an epidemiologist by career , and a man of candid , irreverent jocularity .
He was wearing an epauletted uniform sweater ; at the time , he was also an officer in the United States Public Health Service , which is organized into ranks , like those in the U.S. Navy .
“ You ’ ve heard all the talk from our people , ” he said .
“ Which of these diseases is your favorite ?
” My favorite ?
Ebola is pretty damn interesting , I told him .
“ Aaah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I like Ebola as much as the next person.
” He had done crucial epidemiological work during the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit , in what was then Zaire , organizing control measures , investigating transmission , tracing the outbreak back to its Patient Zero , risking his life to help end a juggernaut of misery and death .
He continued , “ But , for my money , SARS was the one.
” SARS ?
I knew of it only as a bad viral disease that , in 2003 , came out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Toronto , Singapore , and a few other cities .
The acronym stands for “ severe acute respiratory syndrome.
” It ’ s an ugly illness that can lead to lethal pneumonia .
A little more than eight thousand people were infected , of whom about ten per cent died , and then the outbreak ended .
“ Why SARS ?
” I asked .
“ Because it was so contagious , and so lethal , ” he said .
“ And we were very lucky to stop it.
” SARS was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ear .
This was on our lunch break , I had stopped taking notes , and it was fourteen years ago , so I can ’ t swear that Khan mentioned the other thing that is most relevant about SARS : It was caused by a novel coronavirus .
Ali Khan is now the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center , in Omaha .
He seems an unlikely Omahan : born and raised in Brooklyn , by Pakistani immigrant parents , he went to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( in Brooklyn ) for medical school .
“ And then I did this crazy thing of leaving Brooklyn ” —crazy to his family , “ because I have uncles and aunts who have never yet left Brooklyn to go to the city.
” His father , Gulab Deen Khan , was a self-made man of the epic sort : as a teen-age peasant farmer , he trekked from Kashmir to Bombay , lied about his age , and got work on a ship , greasing engines .
His friends called him Dini @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was small .
After moving to the U.S. , Dini Khan stoked coal in boilers to heat apartment buildings in Brooklyn until he had saved enough to buy an apartment building himself .
He made money—what seemed a fortune .
Before he lost it , in another speculation , Dini Khan decided that his young son , Ali , should learn about his family ’ s culture , religion , and language .
He sent Ali back to Pakistan for middle and high school .
By parental miscalculation , he chose a classic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better place to learn cricket than Urdu or Islam .
Ali Khan , now fifty-six years old , told me this story , punctuated with laughs , when I reached him recently by Skype .
His dark hair and beard had grayed a bit , but he still looked fit and sounded jovial .
He spoke of Omaha like a pitchman for the Chamber of Commerce : great city , safe , unpretentious ethos , full of billionaires , such as Warren Buffett , who live in their old family homes , drive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ checks to the community .
“ I love being a dean , ” he said .
“ It ’ s so much fun.
” He went to Omaha in 2014 , leaving the directorship of the C.D.C.
’ s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response , which included overseeing the Strategic National Stockpile of emergency medical supplies , supervising eight hundred employees , helping assemble a national biodefense strategy against pandemic threats , and much else .
“ The end of my career at C.D.C.
, I managed a $ 1.5-billion budget @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” He had travelled the world on outbreak responses , from Wyoming to Bangladesh .
During a mission to southern Chile , investigating a hantavirus outbreak , he visited remote villages , sometimes on horseback , trapping rodents to determine which species carried the virus .
“ We learned quickly that there were a lot of rodents , ” he said .
After he worked on Rift Valley fever in Saudi Arabia , in 2001 , the Saudi Minister of Health gave him a Lucite replica of a beheading sword as a token @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in central Zaire , during an outbreak of monkeypox , he and his team got word that two sets of combatants in the raging civil war—Laurent Kabila ’ s guerrillas and the opposing forces of President Mobutu—were coming .
“ They ’ ll likely take your vehicles and gear , ” an American Embassy contact advised by satellite telephone .
“ But they probably won ’ t kill you.
” Khan ’ s group packed fast and vamoosed on a small airplane , which rose straight into a thrashing thunderstorm .
“ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Khan recounted in a book , “ The Next Pandemic , ” full of colorful field adventures and serious warnings , published in 2016 .
“ I looked over and saw that the French physician sitting next to me was writing a farewell note to his family .
Which got me thinking.
” His thought : This is a risky profession , and the work has to be worth a person ’ s life .
For more than two decades at the C.D.C.
, it evidently was .
In 1995 , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for Ebola .
The following year , he went to the Sultanate of Oman to help with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever .
Uganda , in 2001 , for Ebola again .
SARS , in Singapore , in 2003 .
Chad was still struggling to eliminate polio in 2008 , and Khan went there .

In 2006, the idea that an unknown virus might spill out of some wild animal into humans, achieving person-to-person transmission and causing a global pandemic, seemed a distant prospect to most people. As an engaging science-fiction scare, it ranked somewhere beneath “Alien: Resurrection.” But Ali S. Khan, of the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases, was tasked with dreaming that nightmare by daylight.
NCZVED (pronounced “N. C. Zved,” according to Khan), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, resided in an unobtrusive gray brick building, behind locked gates and locked doors in the C.D.C.’s compound on Clifton Road, six miles northeast of downtown Atlanta. During a two-day visit that year, I worked my way along the NCZVED corridors, interviewing scientists who knew all about Ebola viruses (yes, there are more than one) and their lethal cousin Marburg; about West Nile virus in the Bronx and Sin Nombre virus in Arizona; about simian foamy virus in Bali, which is carried by temple monkeys that crawl over tourists, and monkeypox, which reached Illinois in giant Gambian rats sold as pets; about Junin virus in Argentina and Machupo virus in Bolivia; about Lassa virus in West Africa, Nipah virus in Malaysia, Hendra virus in Australia, and rabies everywhere. All these viruses are zoonotic, meaning that they can pass from animals to people. Most of them, once in a human body, cause mayhem. Some of them also transmit well among people, bursting into local outbreaks that may kill hundreds. They are new to science and to human immune systems; they emerge unpredictably and are difficult to treat; and they can be especially dangerous, as reflected in the name of the branch within NCZVED that studied them—Special Pathogens. For these reasons, some scientists and public-health experts, including Ali Khan, find the viruses an irresistible challenge. “It’s because they keep you on your toes,” he told me. On the second day of my visit, amid the intriguingly gruesome briefings, Khan took me out for sushi.
Khan is a medical doctor by training, an epidemiologist by career, and a man of candid, irreverent jocularity. He was wearing an epauletted uniform sweater; at the time, he was also an officer in the United States Public Health Service, which is organized into ranks, like those in the U.S. Navy. “You’ve heard all the talk from our people,” he said. “Which of these diseases is your favorite?”
My favorite? Ebola is pretty damn interesting, I told him.
“Aaah,” Khan said dismissively. “I like Ebola as much as the next person.” He had done crucial epidemiological work during the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, in what was then Zaire, organizing control measures, investigating transmission, tracing the outbreak back to its Patient Zero, risking his life to help end a juggernaut of misery and death. He continued, “But, for my money, SARS was the one.”
SARS? I knew of it only as a bad viral disease that, in 2003, came out of southern China and killed people in Toronto, Singapore, and a few other cities. The acronym stands for “severe acute respiratory syndrome.” It’s an ugly illness that can lead to lethal pneumonia. A little more than eight thousand people were infected, of whom about ten per cent died, and then the outbreak ended. “Why SARS?” I asked.
“We found a dangling participle in your carburetor, Professor.” Cartoon by George Booth Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
“Because it was so contagious, and so lethal,” he said. “And we were very lucky to stop it.” SARS was the bullet that went whistling past humanity’s ear. This was on our lunch break, I had stopped taking notes, and it was fourteen years ago, so I can’t swear that Khan mentioned the other thing that is most relevant about SARS: It was caused by a novel coronavirus.
Ali Khan is now the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, in Omaha. He seems an unlikely Omahan: born and raised in Brooklyn, by Pakistani immigrant parents, he went to Brooklyn College, followed by SUNY Downstate (in Brooklyn) for medical school. “And then I did this crazy thing of leaving Brooklyn”—crazy to his family, “because I have uncles and aunts who have never yet left Brooklyn to go to the city.” His father, Gulab Deen Khan, was a self-made man of the epic sort: as a teen-age peasant farmer, he trekked from Kashmir to Bombay, lied about his age, and got work on a ship, greasing engines. His friends called him Dini, as a diminutive, because he was small. After moving to the U.S., Dini Khan stoked coal in boilers to heat apartment buildings in Brooklyn until he had saved enough to buy an apartment building himself. He made money—what seemed a fortune. Before he lost it, in another speculation, Dini Khan decided that his young son, Ali, should learn about his family’s culture, religion, and language. He sent Ali back to Pakistan for middle and high school. By parental miscalculation, he chose a classic British boarding school in Lahore, a better place to learn cricket than Urdu or Islam. Ali Khan, now fifty-six years old, told me this story, punctuated with laughs, when I reached him recently by Skype. His dark hair and beard had grayed a bit, but he still looked fit and sounded jovial. He spoke of Omaha like a pitchman for the Chamber of Commerce: great city, safe, unpretentious ethos, full of billionaires, such as Warren Buffett, who live in their old family homes, drive their little Buicks, and write million-dollar checks to the community.
“I love being a dean,” he said. “It’s so much fun.” He went to Omaha in 2014, leaving the directorship of the C.D.C.’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, which included overseeing the Strategic National Stockpile of emergency medical supplies, supervising eight hundred employees, helping assemble a national biodefense strategy against pandemic threats, and much else. “The end of my career at C.D.C., I managed a $1.5-billion budget, so it was people and money.” He had travelled the world on outbreak responses, from Wyoming to Bangladesh. During a mission to southern Chile, investigating a hantavirus outbreak, he visited remote villages, sometimes on horseback, trapping rodents to determine which species carried the virus. “We learned quickly that there were a lot of rodents,” he said. After he worked on Rift Valley fever in Saudi Arabia, in 2001, the Saudi Minister of Health gave him a Lucite replica of a beheading sword as a token of gratitude. At one dicey moment in central Zaire, during an outbreak of monkeypox, he and his team got word that two sets of combatants in the raging civil war—Laurent Kabila’s guerrillas and the opposing forces of President Mobutu—were coming. “They’ll likely take your vehicles and gear,” an American Embassy contact advised by satellite telephone. “But they probably won’t kill you.” Khan’s group packed fast and vamoosed on a small airplane, which rose straight into a thrashing thunderstorm. “The guy on my left was praying,” Khan recounted in a book, “The Next Pandemic,” full of colorful field adventures and serious warnings, published in 2016. “I looked over and saw that the French physician sitting next to me was writing a farewell note to his family. Which got me thinking.” His thought: This is a risky profession, and the work has to be worth a person’s life. For more than two decades at the C.D.C., it evidently was. In 1995, he did that hitch in Kikwit, Zaire, for Ebola. The following year, he went to the Sultanate of Oman to help with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Uganda, in 2001, for Ebola again. SARS, in Singapore, in 2003. Chad was still struggling to eliminate polio in 2008, and Khan went there.
But, toward the end of his tenure with the C.D.C., as a high-level bureaucrat, he was responsible for orchestrating, not investigating; science was a small slice of the job. “Now it’s almost all science,” he said. Virology, epidemiology, ecology, and other aspects of disease science provide the substance of his mission, “educating the next generation of public-health practitioners.”
The eclectic décor of his current office includes electron micrographs of various pathogens hung like portraits in a rogues’ gallery, two sculptures of mosquitoes as big as crows, a “Star Wars” clock, a “Big Hero 6” toy robot, cards sent from children all over the world, mementos and gifts from his travels—a Congolese incense burner, the Saudi beheading sword—and a whiteboard on which he records what he calls “my metrics.” His precious metrics: measures of progress toward academic goals for his school, scientific goals, philanthropic goals to support the work. “I’m evidence-based and evidence-driven,” he said.
I asked Khan about COVID-19. What went so disastrously wrong? Where was the public-health preparedness that he had overseen at the C.D.C.? Why were most countries—and especially the U.S.—so unready? Was it a lack of scientific information, or a lack of money?
“This is about lack of imagination,” he said.
There were warnings. One of them was Khan’s favorite disease, SARS. In late 2002, an “atypical pneumonia” of unknown origin began spreading in and near the city of Guangzhou, in southern China—one of the largest urban agglomerations on the planet. In January, 2003, in the body of a portly seafood merchant suffering a respiratory crisis, the virus reached a Guangzhou hospital. In that hospital, and then at a respiratory facility to which he was transferred, the man coughed, gasped, spewed, and sputtered during his intubation, infecting dozens of health-care workers. He became known among Guangzhou medical staff as the Poison King. In retrospect, disease scientists have applied a different label, calling him a super-spreader.
One infected physician, a nephrologist at the hospital, experienced flu-like symptoms but then, feeling better, took a three-hour bus ride to Hong Kong for his nephew’s wedding. Staying in Room 911 of the Metropole Hotel, the doctor became sick again, spreading the disease along the ninth-floor corridor. In the days that followed, other guests on the ninth floor flew home to Singapore and Toronto, taking the disease with them. Several weeks later, the World Health Organization called it SARS. (The Metropole, having become notorious, was later renamed.) By March 15th, the W.H.O. was reporting a hundred and fifty new SARS cases worldwide.
Two mysteries loomed, one urgent and one haunting: What was the cause—a new virus, and if so what kind?—and from what sort of animal had it come? The first mystery was soon solved by a team led by Malik Peiris, a Sri Lankan doctor who got a degree in microbiology at Oxford before going to the University of Hong Kong. Peiris specialized in influenza, and he suspected that H5N1, a flu virus that is troublesome in birds and often lethal in people but not infectious person-to-person, might have evolved into a form transmissible among humans. His team managed to isolate a new virus from two patients. It was a coronavirus, not a flu bug—that is, it was from a different virus family, with different familial traits. But the mere presence of this new virus in two SARS patients did not mean that it was the cause of the disease. Then Peiris’s team showed with antibody testing that it might indeed be the SARS agent, and further work proved that they were right. Although earlier tradition tended toward naming new viruses by geographical association—Ebola was a river, Marburg a city in Germany, Nipah a Malaysian village, Hendra an Australian suburb—greater sensitivity about stigmatization prevailed. The pathogen became known as SARS-CoV. Recently, the name has been revised to SARS-CoV-1, so that the agent of COVID-19 can be called not Wuhan virus but SARS-CoV-2.
SARS reached Toronto on February 23, 2003, carried by a seventy-eight-year-old woman, who, with her husband, had spent several nights of a two-week trip to Hong Kong on the ninth floor of the Metropole Hotel. The woman sickened, then died at home on March 5th, attended by family, including one of her sons, who soon showed symptoms himself. After a week of breathing difficulties, he went to an emergency room and there, without isolation, was given medication through a nebulizer, which turns liquid into mist, pushing it down a patient’s throat. “It helps open up your airways,” Khan told me—a useful and safe tool to prevent, say, an asthma attack. But, with a highly infectious virus, unwise. “When you breathe that back out, essentially you’re taking all the virus in your lungs and you’re breathing it back out into the air—in the E.R. where you’re being treated.” Two other patients in the E.R. were infected, one of whom soon went to a coronary-care unit with a heart attack. There he eventually infected eight nurses, one doctor, three other patients, two clerks, his own wife, and two technicians, among others. You could call him a super-spreader. One E.R. visit led to a hundred and twenty-eight cases among people associated with the hospital. Seventeen of them died.


newyorker--2020-05-04--The Enduring Romance of the Night Train

The Enduring Romance of the Night Train

Will flygskam have any lasting effect on commercial enterprise ?
The signs are ( or were , before the advent of COVID-19 ) distinctly promising .
A new Nightjet train from Vienna to Brussels , established by Austrian Federal Railways , or Ö.B.B.
, and lauded by its C.E.O.
, Andreas Matthä , as “ an eco-friendly travel option to the E.U .
capital , ” had its inaugural run on January 19th .
A serious journey , at just over fourteen hours .
Ö.B.B .
estimates that the rest of its night network has already saved the world twelve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ delicious irony , given how greedily the budget airlines have eaten into train travel in recent decades .
Further resurrections lie ahead , not least new sleeper services from Vienna and Munich to Amsterdam , slated for December of this year .
One can but hope that such enviable schemes , intended to address the climate crisis , will not be stopped in their tracks by the rival plight through which we currently sweat .
The third reason to choose a sleeper train—and the most compelling—is no more practical than the taste of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might say , is a sense of latent adventure .
Although it is unlikely , as you clatter through the night , that anything of note will befall you , the prospect that it could feels ever present , just out of sight beyond the next curve of the track .
To remain awake to that possibility , even as we ’ re meant to be sleeping , is the privilege that beckons some of us back , year after year , to this awkward and beguiling locomotion .
No wonder trains and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a train zipping through the darkness , with windows illuminated , actually looks like a strip of film .
Plots , laid down on rails , dash ever onward ; anticipation rises like steam .
Consider Claudette Colbert , in “ The Palm Beach Story , ” who falls in with the rowdy millionaires of the Ale and Quail Club .
Sweeping her up as a mascot , and boarding the 11:58 from Penn Station with a pack of hounds , they think nothing of firing their shotguns at crackers , tossed up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As for Hitchcock ’ s “ The Lady Vanishes , ” the lady in question is a grandmotherly secret agent , who , before she disappears , daubs her name on the misted window of the dining car .
A ridiculous method , in any other time and place , of leaving your mark ; on a night train , though , it seems only right and proper .
If you don ’ t believe me , you have to believe Cary Grant .
In “ North by Northwest ” ( more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Century , from New York to Chicago , without a ticket .
By chance—or so he thinks—he meets Eva Marie Saint , first in the corridor and then in the dining car , where he orders a Gibson and , on her recommendation , the brook trout .
The two of them return to her compartment , where , during a police inspection , she conceals Grant in the foldaway top bunk .
Later , as daylight fails , they lean against the wall of the compartment and kiss , over and over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his neck .
“ Beats flying , doesn ’ t it ?
” he says to her .
Sure does .
Sleeping on a sleeper is easier said than done .
In “ I Know Where I ’ m Going !
, ” a magical film from 1945 , the heroine , played by Wendy Hiller , caught the night train from Manchester to Glasgow , heading for her wedding in the Western Isles .
And she definitely slept—lying in her compartment and dreaming of tartan-shrouded hills , as her bridal dress , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the motion of the train .
But those dreams were bustling affairs , intercut with shots of pistons and wheels , and she arrived more panicked than refreshed .
Thirty years later , in “ Murder on the Orient Express , ” the same actress became a veiled and tremulous grande dame , plunging a blade into the murderee before the train was halted by snow .
It ’ s as if night trains , explicitly designed to aid slumber , implied too many other activities , beginning with love and death , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state , I would argue , is a delirious doze , peppered with fits and starts—the doze , for instance , of Anna Karenina , who gets a seat but no bed on her journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg .
The snow outside is in tumult , but the compartment is heated by a stove : “ She passed the paper-knife over the window pane , then laid its smooth , cool surface to her cheek.
” You can almost hear it hiss .
Anna falls into a fevered reverie , from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pulls into a station .
Such is the paradox that awaits the night-train novice : you sleep on the go , and you wake when you stop .
( Anyone who has rocked a cradle will second this observation . )
In the early pages of “ Stamboul Train , ” whose narrative puffs from Ostend to Constantinople , Graham Greene points out this peculiar hiccup in the laws of physics : “ In the rushing reverberating express , noise was so regular that it was the equivalent of silence , movement was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mind accepted it as stillness.
” Do the minds of sailors accommodate themselves , with equal ease , to a raging sea ?
I first had a chance to test Greene ’ s thesis on a pre-university pilgrimage from London to Athens , by rail , with a halfway break at Salzburg .
Thereafter lay terra incognita , for the Communist bloc was still intact .
I was travelling solo , in a couchette of six ; my fellow-coucheurs were smugglers , brazenly lugging bags of Western luxuries—lipstick , nylons , and coffee—across @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I assumed that they had bribed the conductor , who padded up and down the car in socks , and left us largely alone .
The date must have been mid-May , 1981 , for an assassin had just tried to kill the Pope : an event of such weight that the smugglers and I , who shared no common language , reënacted the crime en route .
( Surprisingly , they had no gun among them , so I was shot by a lit cigarette . )
Having commandeered the upper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Wuthering Heights , ” drifting off , and lurching awake , bereft of my bearings , whenever the train paused .
I recall tugging the edge of the blind , peering out into first light , and seeing an old woman , quite still , with a bundle of sticks on her back .
It was as if we had taken a branch line into the world of Brueghel .
How long it was before the weary train crawled into Larissa station , in Athens , I don ’ t know .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ nights ( insofar as I can tell them apart ) are filed away forever in my brain .
A journey by sleeper demands to be remembered , whereas an overnight flight is something you want to forget .
Though the former may deposit you , benumbed , on a strange platform at a wretched hour , you somehow feel emboldened and ready to roll , whereas the latter leaves you curdled with misanthropy , watching everyone ’ s luggage but yours go round and round on a joyless carrousel .
Red-eye is so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I found myself in Lisbon .
It was Monday , March 9th .
The coronavirus , busy with northern Italy , had yet to turn its attention to Portugal , and the capital was still well peopled .
On the Praça do Comércio , a handsome square that flanks the north shore of the Tagus River , cafés were doing a brisk trade , though the clamor dipped as I walked northeast , into the small streets that wind and climb through the Alfama district .
With the descent of dusk , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be my last chance to meander before the borders closed , and everything was heightened and charged .
I smelled the orange trees beside the cathedral before I saw them , and the vinho tinto I drank at dinner had a potency greater than anything recorded on its label .
Besides , I had a train to catch , to Madrid , and the inevitable broken night ahead , so the urge to fill up was not to be resisted .
Roasted blood sausage in green wine ?
Bring it on .

The third reason to choose a sleeper train—and the most compelling—is no more practical than the taste of a peach. At stake, you might say, is a sense of latent adventure. Although it is unlikely, as you clatter through the night, that anything of note will befall you, the prospect that it could feels ever present, just out of sight beyond the next curve of the track. To remain awake to that possibility, even as we’re meant to be sleeping, is the privilege that beckons some of us back, year after year, to this awkward and beguiling locomotion.
No wonder trains and movies make such cozy bedfellows—so cozy that a train zipping through the darkness, with windows illuminated, actually looks like a strip of film. Plots, laid down on rails, dash ever onward; anticipation rises like steam. Consider Claudette Colbert, in “The Palm Beach Story,” who falls in with the rowdy millionaires of the Ale and Quail Club. Sweeping her up as a mascot, and boarding the 11:58 from Penn Station with a pack of hounds, they think nothing of firing their shotguns at crackers, tossed up by a bar steward like clay pigeons. As for Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes,” the lady in question is a grandmotherly secret agent, who, before she disappears, daubs her name on the misted window of the dining car. A ridiculous method, in any other time and place, of leaving your mark; on a night train, though, it seems only right and proper.
If you don’t believe me, you have to believe Cary Grant. In “North by Northwest” (more Hitchcock), he boards the Twentieth Century, from New York to Chicago, without a ticket. By chance—or so he thinks—he meets Eva Marie Saint, first in the corridor and then in the dining car, where he orders a Gibson and, on her recommendation, the brook trout. The two of them return to her compartment, where, during a police inspection, she conceals Grant in the foldaway top bunk. Later, as daylight fails, they lean against the wall of the compartment and kiss, over and over, her hands caressing the back of his neck. “Beats flying, doesn’t it?” he says to her. Sure does.
Sleeping on a sleeper is easier said than done. In “I Know Where I’m Going!,” a magical film from 1945, the heroine, played by Wendy Hiller, caught the night train from Manchester to Glasgow, heading for her wedding in the Western Isles. And she definitely slept—lying in her compartment and dreaming of tartan-shrouded hills, as her bridal dress, hung on a rack, swayed with the motion of the train. But those dreams were bustling affairs, intercut with shots of pistons and wheels, and she arrived more panicked than refreshed. Thirty years later, in “Murder on the Orient Express,” the same actress became a veiled and tremulous grande dame, plunging a blade into the murderee before the train was halted by snow. It’s as if night trains, explicitly designed to aid slumber, implied too many other activities, beginning with love and death, to be truly soporific.
The ideal state, I would argue, is a delirious doze, peppered with fits and starts—the doze, for instance, of Anna Karenina, who gets a seat but no bed on her journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The snow outside is in tumult, but the compartment is heated by a stove: “She passed the paper-knife over the window pane, then laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek.” You can almost hear it hiss. Anna falls into a fevered reverie, from which she emerges only as the train pulls into a station. Such is the paradox that awaits the night-train novice: you sleep on the go, and you wake when you stop. (Anyone who has rocked a cradle will second this observation.) In the early pages of “Stamboul Train,” whose narrative puffs from Ostend to Constantinople, Graham Greene points out this peculiar hiccup in the laws of physics: “In the rushing reverberating express, noise was so regular that it was the equivalent of silence, movement was so continuous that after a while the mind accepted it as stillness.” Do the minds of sailors accommodate themselves, with equal ease, to a raging sea?
I first had a chance to test Greene’s thesis on a pre-university pilgrimage from London to Athens, by rail, with a halfway break at Salzburg. Thereafter lay terra incognita, for the Communist bloc was still intact. I was travelling solo, in a couchette of six; my fellow-coucheurs were smugglers, brazenly lugging bags of Western luxuries—lipstick, nylons, and coffee—across the frontier into what was then Yugoslavia. I assumed that they had bribed the conductor, who padded up and down the car in socks, and left us largely alone. The date must have been mid-May, 1981, for an assassin had just tried to kill the Pope: an event of such weight that the smugglers and I, who shared no common language, reënacted the crime en route. (Surprisingly, they had no gun among them, so I was shot by a lit cigarette.) Having commandeered the upper berth, I lay there, reading “Wuthering Heights,” drifting off, and lurching awake, bereft of my bearings, whenever the train paused. I recall tugging the edge of the blind, peering out into first light, and seeing an old woman, quite still, with a bundle of sticks on her back. It was as if we had taken a branch line into the world of Brueghel.
How long it was before the weary train crawled into Larissa station, in Athens, I don’t know. But the minutiae of those days and nights (insofar as I can tell them apart) are filed away forever in my brain. A journey by sleeper demands to be remembered, whereas an overnight flight is something you want to forget. Though the former may deposit you, benumbed, on a strange platform at a wretched hour, you somehow feel emboldened and ready to roll, whereas the latter leaves you curdled with misanthropy, watching everyone’s luggage but yours go round and round on a joyless carrousel. Red-eye is so much worse than gray-face.
Last month, I found myself in Lisbon. It was Monday, March 9th. The coronavirus, busy with northern Italy, had yet to turn its attention to Portugal, and the capital was still well peopled. On the Praça do Comércio, a handsome square that flanks the north shore of the Tagus River, cafés were doing a brisk trade, though the clamor dipped as I walked northeast, into the small streets that wind and climb through the Alfama district. With the descent of dusk, my senses woke up. This would be my last chance to meander before the borders closed, and everything was heightened and charged. I smelled the orange trees beside the cathedral before I saw them, and the vinho tinto I drank at dinner had a potency greater than anything recorded on its label. Besides, I had a train to catch, to Madrid, and the inevitable broken night ahead, so the urge to fill up was not to be resisted. Roasted blood sausage in green wine? Bring it on.
The stroll from the Alfama to Santa Apolónia railroad station takes you past a museum devoted to fado, that noble strain of Portuguese song which, more closely than any other musical form, approximates the human sob. To be honest, I was convinced, on arriving at the station, that the employees had just come back from a three-hour fado rehearsal down the road. Never have I seen a sorrier crew. Wandering to and fro like unburied souls in the underworld, they wore the saddest uniform known to man: gray suit, gray shirt, gray tie, and gray shoes. I half expected them to leave a trail of ash. My fellow-passengers were few; one of them, laden with plastic bags, claimed to have been burgled before leaving her rental apartment, and asked to borrow twenty euros. The first thing that greeted me, as I boarded, was not a smiling steward but the lavish tang of drains. It was one of those nights.
We pulled away, and, as I stood at the door of my carriage, in fond valediction, something occurred to me: the door was open. The platform slid by, quickening, a single step away. Maybe this was company practice, assigning responsibility to customers. If so, what else were we bidden to do? Toot the whistle? Make the beds? In case there were children aboard, I swung the door shut. With a heavy clang, it locked; the handle snapped upward and struck my middle finger. I was bleeding under my nail, swearing like a stoker, and we hadn’t even left the station. Who says that the romance of travel is dead?
The ensuing night had not a shred of glamour. No snowdrift brought the engine to a halt. No spies, to my knowledge, were spirited on or off the train. No unnamed strangers accosted me, entrusted me with vital papers, or proposed a dry Martini. The sole occupants of the refreshment car were three of the gray men, and their mood bore no relation to that of the Ale and Quail. At half past six in the morning, tiptoeing to the far end of my carriage, I found another door open. It revealed the interior of a compartment, and there, on the bottom bunk, lay the conductor, fully dressed, face down. For a second, I’m sorry to say, I was disappointed not to see the richly inlaid hilt of a dagger protruding from between his shoulder blades. In truth, he was not murdered but merely napping, presumably having wept himself to sleep.
Such was the non-event of the journey. Yet I relished every mile of it, pulling wide the curtains at the witching hour, as I brushed my teeth, to disclose a vacant platform and the sign “Caxarias–Fátima” in a glowing haze; leaving them open as I lay on the bed, thus admitting the searchlight of the full moon; and, at last, stepping out into a Madrid morning as fresh as rising dough. At nine o’clock, on the south side of the Prado, beside the Botanical Garden, three or four citizens walked their dogs in the crisp air. An hour later, I entered the museum, and spent my final stretch of liberty, more or less alone, in the company of Titian and Veronese. A few days afterward, the global lockdown began.
None of us, even those who evade contagion, will be left unmarked by the ordeal. Lives that hang fire are hard to tend. My guess, for what it’s worth, is that armchair travellers will manage better than most; railroad fanatics, their desktops thronged with timetables, are happy to plan elaborate itineraries that they know they may never pursue, across lands that they have no intention of visiting. I doubt whether I shall ever take the Andean Explorer, featuring “in-built oxygen for additional comfort at high altitudes,” from Cusco to Puno, and get woken up, at sunrise, for a bleary squint at Lake Titicaca.