Briefly Noted Book Reviews

The Kidnapping Club , by Jonathan Daniel Wells ( Bold Type Books ) .
This history of eighteen-thirties New York probes the city ’ s entanglement with the slave economy , which made it “ the most potent proslavery and pro-South city north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
” Despite the state ’ s emancipation law of 1817 , police marshals and bounty hunters began terrorizing Black communities , abducting several hundred people and selling them into bondage .
Alliances between Southern plantation owners and New York bankers , judges , and politicians fostered a system “ constructed to cheapen Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the cotton trade fuelled a nascent Wall Street and admiringly portrays David Ruggles , a Black abolitionist who gave the Kidnapping Club its name and organized to resist it .
Dark , Salt , Clear , by Lamorna Ash ( Bloomsbury ) .
This seafaring memoir recounts a stay in Newlyn , a Cornish village with five pubs , an active fishing port , and a low average income .
Ash , a recent university graduate from London , ships out with the crew of a trawler called the Filadelfia .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the town ’ s younger inhabitants and the impact of corporate takeovers on its fishing industry .
Her book is most memorable for its visceral descriptions of the boat , the nets , the men , the gulls , the fish , and their innards .
Fish go “ shaking and fizzing ” over the deck ; gulls “ churn the air up into a rage.
” Ordesa , by Manuel Vilas , translated from the Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg ( Riverhead ) .
The narrator of this sober yet elegant autobiographical novel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past and with his encroaching mortality .
Painfully observant and poetically inclined , he reflects on his impoverished childhood in northern Spain , his job as a teacher , his battle with alcoholism , his divorce and his experience of fatherhood , and , above all , his relationship with his deceased parents .
He ruminates on how inequalities in postwar Spain shaped his family , and on the ways that death leaves an imprint on the actions of the living .
Constantly looming in his imagination is the image of Ordesa , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which he visited as a child with his father .
This landscape , where “ for the first time I was conscious that time was beginning , ” symbolizes the narrator ’ s belief that memory can be tangible— “ a state of mind that is a place.
” The Sun Collective , by Charles Baxter ( Pantheon ) .
The collective of this novel ’ s title is an anticapitalist cell in Minneapolis .
Members include a bank worker partial to a drug that makes her “ both particle and wave , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ class by a more militant member , and a retired man whose son is missing and who spends his mornings pacing around a mall , convinced that “ the love of accumulation is killing us.
” As the group ’ s plans , at first focussed on a community garden , take a more radical and violent turn , its members are forced underground and tensions among them escalate .
Baxter infuses his tale of class warfare in the social-media era with a hint of the supernatural .

The Kidnapping Club, by Jonathan Daniel Wells (Bold Type Books). This history of eighteen-thirties New York probes the city’s entanglement with the slave economy, which made it “the most potent proslavery and pro-South city north of the Mason-Dixon Line.” Despite the state’s emancipation law of 1817, police marshals and bounty hunters began terrorizing Black communities, abducting several hundred people and selling them into bondage. Alliances between Southern plantation owners and New York bankers, judges, and politicians fostered a system “constructed to cheapen Black lives.” Wells details how the funding of the cotton trade fuelled a nascent Wall Street and admiringly portrays David Ruggles, a Black abolitionist who gave the Kidnapping Club its name and organized to resist it.
Dark, Salt, Clear, by Lamorna Ash (Bloomsbury). This seafaring memoir recounts a stay in Newlyn, a Cornish village with five pubs, an active fishing port, and a low average income. Ash, a recent university graduate from London, ships out with the crew of a trawler called the Filadelfia. She notes the dearth of job opportunities for the town’s younger inhabitants and the impact of corporate takeovers on its fishing industry. Her book is most memorable for its visceral descriptions of the boat, the nets, the men, the gulls, the fish, and their innards. Fish go “shaking and fizzing” over the deck; gulls “churn the air up into a rage.”
Ordesa, by Manuel Vilas, translated from the Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg (Riverhead). The narrator of this sober yet elegant autobiographical novel is a middle-aged man reckoning with his past and with his encroaching mortality. Painfully observant and poetically inclined, he reflects on his impoverished childhood in northern Spain, his job as a teacher, his battle with alcoholism, his divorce and his experience of fatherhood, and, above all, his relationship with his deceased parents. He ruminates on how inequalities in postwar Spain shaped his family, and on the ways that death leaves an imprint on the actions of the living. Constantly looming in his imagination is the image of Ordesa, “a place full of mountains” which he visited as a child with his father. This landscape, where “for the first time I was conscious that time was beginning,” symbolizes the narrator’s belief that memory can be tangible—“a state of mind that is a place.”
The Sun Collective, by Charles Baxter (Pantheon). The collective of this novel’s title is an anticapitalist cell in Minneapolis. Members include a bank worker partial to a drug that makes her “both particle and wave,” who is recruited at a yoga class by a more militant member, and a retired man whose son is missing and who spends his mornings pacing around a mall, convinced that “the love of accumulation is killing us.” As the group’s plans, at first focussed on a community garden, take a more radical and violent turn, its members are forced underground and tensions among them escalate. Baxter infuses his tale of class warfare in the social-media era with a hint of the supernatural.


newyorker--2020-12-28--“Final Poem for My Father Misnamed in My Mouth,” by Phillip B. Williams

Sunlight still holds you and gives your shapelessness to every room .
By noon , the kitchen catches your hands , misshapen sun rays .
The windows have your eyes .
Taken from me , your body .
I reorder my life with absence .
You are everywhere now where once I could not find you even in your own body .
Death means everything has become possible .
I ’ ve been told I have your ways , your laughter haunts my mother from my mouth .
Everything is possible .
Fatherlight washes over the kitchen floor .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the dead and make of memory a sponge to wash your corpse .
Your name is not addict or sir .
This is not a dream : you died and were buried three times .
Once , after my birth .
Again , against your hellos shedding into closing doors , your face a mask I placed over my face .
The final time , you beneath my feet .
Was I buried with you then ?
I will not call what you had left anything other than gone and sweet perhaps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but I survived .
I fell in love with being your son .
Now what ?
Possibility was a bird I once knew .
It had one wing .

Audio: Read by the author.
Sunlight still holds you and gives
your shapelessness to every room.
By noon, the kitchen catches your hands,
misshapen sun rays. The windows
have your eyes. Taken from me,
your body. I reorder my life with
absence. You are everywhere now
where once I could not find you
even in your own body. Death means
everything has become
possible. I’ve been told I have
your ways, your laughter haunts my mother
from my mouth. Everything
is possible. Fatherlight
washes over the kitchen floor.
I try to hold a bit of kindness
for the dead and make of memory
a sponge to wash your corpse.
Your name is not addict or sir.
This is not a dream: you died
and were buried three times. Once,
after my birth. Again, against
your hellos shedding into closing doors,
your face a mask I placed over my face.
The final time, you beneath my feet. Was I
buried with you then? I will not call
what you had left anything
other than gone and sweet perhaps. I am
not your junior, but I
survived. I fell in love with being
your son. Now what? Possibility
was a bird I once knew. It had one wing.


newyorker--2020-12-28--A Hot Mess Caught in a Caper in “The Flight Attendant”

How on earth does the title character of “ The Flight Attendant , ” the best new miniseries on HBO Max , manage to hold down her job ?
Cassie Bowden ( Kaley Cuoco ) lives with her feet off the ground , both metaphorically and literally .
She is the embodiment of all those lightly sexist tabloid monikers : party girl , train wreck , hot mess .
In order to get a colleague in the first-class cabin to slide her some liquor , Cassie needn ’ t do more than pout and blow on her blond curtain bangs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ superficially a caper , and , with Cassie , it dutifully references the Hitchcock heroine .
But the blue of her uniform put me in mind of another pop-culture touchstone : Britney Spears ’ s flight-attendant themed music video for “ Toxic , ” in which the singer spills champagne on her passengers and makes out with one of them in the bathroom .
This woman is steering , but she is not in control .
In the pilot , Cassie swoons over the guy in 3C : Alex Sokolov ( Michiel Huisman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in noir parlance , as tall , dark , and handsome .
And literate !
( The two bond over Russian novels . )
On landing in Bangkok , they engage in excess : too much food , too much alcohol , and too much sex .
The morning after , Cassie wakes up to find Alex dead , his throat slit , the sheets bloodied .
She is unable to recall the events of the night before .
The killer ’ s identity will remain a mystery for the next seven episodes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself : memory , with its ability to not only augment the truth but to supplant it .
“ The Flight Attendant ” is an adaptation , from Steve Yockey , of Chris Bohjalian ’ s novel of the same name .
( Cuoco is an executive producer . )
The series is like a clever pop song ; the thrill is in its juxtaposition of a rowdy rhythm with a lyrical portrait of tragedy and grief .
Cassie tidies the murder scene , then flees the hotel .
Back at work , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the wonderfully fey Shane ( Griffin Matthews ) and the middle-aged worrier Megan ( the terrific Rosie Perez ) .
But no one is too concerned about her erratic behavior .
Everyone is used to tolerating her chaos .
On the flight back home to New York City , Shane ’ s phone buzzes with the news of Alex ’ s murder .
Cassie is interviewed by the F.B.I .
; she pleads , rather unconvincingly , that Alex was alive the last time she saw him .
All the while , blurred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back .
These moments intensify as the series goes on , extending back past Cassie ’ s time in Bangkok to unearth repressed memories from her childhood .
She also sees visions of Alex , who , from beyond the grave , becomes her spirit guide .
The series does not waste time pointing the finger at Cassie .
When she blurts out , “ I ’ m not that kind of drunk—I ’ m public-nudity , yelling-in-the-subway kind of drunk , ” we believe her .
She just doesn ’ t seem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commit a murder ; in fact , much of the fun of “ The Flight Attendant ” lies in watching her stumble into capability , as she becomes an amateur sleuth in an attempt to clear her name .
We get a villain turned friend in Miranda , played by Michelle Gomez , with her gorgeously craggy face .
We get a wacky laundering scheme , replete with sinisterly named organizations like Lionfish , that is uncovered by Cassie and her lawyer best friend , Annie ( the flinty Zosia Mamet ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to New York to Rome and back .
All that movement—geographic , psychological , physical—can cause “ The Flight Attendant ” to get jerky .
( Cassie herself is in constant motion—always flying somewhere or running from something—in flashy split-screen sequences that reflect her fractured state of mind . )
But the mystery rights itself before it crashes ; we finish the eight episodes because of the show ’ s aesthetic ambition—clear from its boldly designed title cards , which evoke Saul Bass—and because of Cuoco ’ s remarkable performance , a breakthrough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s lies calcify into a tower of avoidance and pain .
I loved the gradual darkening of the party scenes : our stewardess goes from gyrating at European clubs to stealing a kiddie ride from a bodega .
In Cassie , “ The Flight Attendant ” manages a character study that feels intriguingly quiet , especially given the commotion of its thriller conceit .
This may be at the expense of the secondary characters , who were not given much room to grow .
( A couple of welcome twists in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ however . )
I was particularly interested in Perez ’ s Megan , a homely wife from Oyster Bay , who is helplessly drawn to the dirty glamour of her younger , whiter colleague .
She calls her constantly , fawning that could be pseudo-maternal , sexual , or both .
But , rather than explore this , the show opts to silo Megan into a convoluted subplot that culminates in her gaining “ agency ” by becoming a sleuth herself .
“ The Flight Attendant ” works hard to earn its place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ include “ Russian Doll , ” “ I May Destroy You , ” and “ BoJack Horseman.
” But the show ’ s high jinks sent me back to Bugs Bunny .
Cassie moves through the world like a flesh-and-blood cartoon , careening from drunkenness to lucidity .
Cuoco gives this physical recklessness some meaning , thereby humanizing a trope .
When she visits Alex ’ s workplace , in search of more clues , she is chased by security guards whom she is able to evade , but not before she destroys @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , on display in the lobby .
A live rabbit makes frequent appearances in Cassie ’ s surreal flashbacks .
We learn that the animal witnessed the car crash that killed Cassie ’ s alcoholic father .
Cassie has convinced herself that her dad was a fun-loving prankster ; the reality is much more violent .
( He gave his daughter her first beer when she was ten . )
The family trauma anchors what could have been a fizzy romp about a bad one-night stand .
The series is also a romance—or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alex of Cassie ’ s imagination helps her confront her personal issues .
“ You say you wan na help people , but , really , you ’ re attracted to disaster , ” he says .
“ I ’ m totally in love with you , ” she tells him later , though she is really talking only to herself .
The device is almost grotesque , but it ’ s also lovely .
“ Bridgerton ” also concerns the legacy of a bad parent .
When Simon ’ s father was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he would never have children , in order to end the Hastings line .
But , as is expected , Daphne and Simon end up falling for each other , and their union permits “ Bridgerton ” to mature past the cutesy and into the adult .
Fans of the novels will watch the series out of curiosity as to how it will reveal the identity of Lady Whistledown—and also for the feverish sex .
Shonda Rhimes , who is almost a genre unto herself , produced the series , which was created @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the first to début under a new deal that Rhimes has with Netflix .
My empty , end-of-the-year brain was well served by the burlesque of selfish viscounts , conniving ladies of the house , and enterprising modistes .
Less pleasurable were certain attempts at seriousness .
Van Dusen ’ s version of nineteenth-century England is race-blind , and Simon ’ s refusal to propagate his seed has something to do with his father ’ s race shame .
The grafting of contemporary politics onto the period piece feels extraneous and vague @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jelled better in the Obama era .
“ Love , your grace , conquers all , ” Simon ’ s de-facto mother , Lady Danbury , tells him .
“ Love changes nothing , ” he responds .
♦

How on earth does the title character of “The Flight Attendant,” the best new miniseries on HBO Max, manage to hold down her job? Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) lives with her feet off the ground, both metaphorically and literally. She is the embodiment of all those lightly sexist tabloid monikers: party girl, train wreck, hot mess. In order to get a colleague in the first-class cabin to slide her some liquor, Cassie needn’t do more than pout and blow on her blond curtain bangs. “The Flight Attendant” is superficially a caper, and, with Cassie, it dutifully references the Hitchcock heroine. But the blue of her uniform put me in mind of another pop-culture touchstone: Britney Spears’s flight-attendant themed music video for “Toxic,” in which the singer spills champagne on her passengers and makes out with one of them in the bathroom. This woman is steering, but she is not in control.
In the pilot, Cassie swoons over the guy in 3C: Alex Sokolov (Michiel Huisman), who might be described, in noir parlance, as tall, dark, and handsome. And literate! (The two bond over Russian novels.) On landing in Bangkok, they engage in excess: too much food, too much alcohol, and too much sex. The morning after, Cassie wakes up to find Alex dead, his throat slit, the sheets bloodied. She is unable to recall the events of the night before. The killer’s identity will remain a mystery for the next seven episodes, but one antagonist has already revealed itself: memory, with its ability to not only augment the truth but to supplant it.
“The Flight Attendant” is an adaptation, from Steve Yockey, of Chris Bohjalian’s novel of the same name. (Cuoco is an executive producer.) The series is like a clever pop song; the thrill is in its juxtaposition of a rowdy rhythm with a lyrical portrait of tragedy and grief. Cassie tidies the murder scene, then flees the hotel. Back at work, she is eyed by her co-workers, the wonderfully fey Shane (Griffin Matthews) and the middle-aged worrier Megan (the terrific Rosie Perez). But no one is too concerned about her erratic behavior. Everyone is used to tolerating her chaos.
On the flight back home to New York City, Shane’s phone buzzes with the news of Alex’s murder. Cassie is interviewed by the F.B.I.; she pleads, rather unconvincingly, that Alex was alive the last time she saw him. All the while, blurred memories of their date night come rushing back. These moments intensify as the series goes on, extending back past Cassie’s time in Bangkok to unearth repressed memories from her childhood. She also sees visions of Alex, who, from beyond the grave, becomes her spirit guide.
The series does not waste time pointing the finger at Cassie. When she blurts out, “I’m not that kind of drunk—I’m public-nudity, yelling-in-the-subway kind of drunk,” we believe her. She just doesn’t seem like she’s capable enough to commit a murder; in fact, much of the fun of “The Flight Attendant” lies in watching her stumble into capability, as she becomes an amateur sleuth in an attempt to clear her name. We get a villain turned friend in Miranda, played by Michelle Gomez, with her gorgeously craggy face. We get a wacky laundering scheme, replete with sinisterly named organizations like Lionfish, that is uncovered by Cassie and her lawyer best friend, Annie (the flinty Zosia Mamet). We go, distractingly, from Thailand to New York to Rome and back.
All that movement—geographic, psychological, physical—can cause “The Flight Attendant” to get jerky. (Cassie herself is in constant motion—always flying somewhere or running from something—in flashy split-screen sequences that reflect her fractured state of mind.) But the mystery rights itself before it crashes; we finish the eight episodes because of the show’s aesthetic ambition—clear from its boldly designed title cards, which evoke Saul Bass—and because of Cuoco’s remarkable performance, a breakthrough for the career sitcom actor.
Cassie’s lies calcify into a tower of avoidance and pain. I loved the gradual darkening of the party scenes: our stewardess goes from gyrating at European clubs to stealing a kiddie ride from a bodega. In Cassie, “The Flight Attendant” manages a character study that feels intriguingly quiet, especially given the commotion of its thriller conceit. This may be at the expense of the secondary characters, who were not given much room to grow. (A couple of welcome twists in the finale bode well for future seasons, however.) I was particularly interested in Perez’s Megan, a homely wife from Oyster Bay, who is helplessly drawn to the dirty glamour of her younger, whiter colleague. She calls her constantly, fawning that could be pseudo-maternal, sexual, or both. But, rather than explore this, the show opts to silo Megan into a convoluted subplot that culminates in her gaining “agency” by becoming a sleuth herself.
“The Flight Attendant” works hard to earn its place among its contemporary influences, which might include “Russian Doll,” “I May Destroy You,” and “BoJack Horseman.” But the show’s high jinks sent me back to Bugs Bunny. Cassie moves through the world like a flesh-and-blood cartoon, careening from drunkenness to lucidity. Cuoco gives this physical recklessness some meaning, thereby humanizing a trope. When she visits Alex’s workplace, in search of more clues, she is chased by security guards whom she is able to evade, but not before she destroys a sculpture of—what else?—a rabbit, on display in the lobby.
A live rabbit makes frequent appearances in Cassie’s surreal flashbacks. We learn that the animal witnessed the car crash that killed Cassie’s alcoholic father. Cassie has convinced herself that her dad was a fun-loving prankster; the reality is much more violent. (He gave his daughter her first beer when she was ten.) The family trauma anchors what could have been a fizzy romp about a bad one-night stand. The series is also a romance—or a sweet perversion of one. The Alex of Cassie’s imagination helps her confront her personal issues. “You say you wanna help people, but, really, you’re attracted to disaster,” he says. “I’m totally in love with you,” she tells him later, though she is really talking only to herself. The device is almost grotesque, but it’s also lovely.
Cassie Bowden would be a delicious subject for Lady Whistledown, the anonymous gossip columnist in Netflix’s “Bridgerton.” Whistledown is the faceless narrator of the series, a costume farce of Regency society based on Julia Quinn’s wildly popular romance-novel series, and she is voiced by Julie Andrews—possibly the least anonymous person in Britain. It’s courting season in early-nineteenth-century London, and the eligible girls, teetering under pounds of curls, are vying for approval from the snuff-sniffing Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel). Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor, as delicate as a songbird) is the most sought-after girl in the “ton,” until, all of a sudden, she’s not. Desperate to marry well, she recruits the grouchy bachelor Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page), into a mutually beneficial dating scheme.
“Bridgerton” also concerns the legacy of a bad parent. When Simon’s father was on his deathbed, Simon vowed that he would never have children, in order to end the Hastings line. But, as is expected, Daphne and Simon end up falling for each other, and their union permits “Bridgerton” to mature past the cutesy and into the adult. Fans of the novels will watch the series out of curiosity as to how it will reveal the identity of Lady Whistledown—and also for the feverish sex.
Shonda Rhimes, who is almost a genre unto herself, produced the series, which was created by Chris Van Dusen, and it is the first to début under a new deal that Rhimes has with Netflix. My empty, end-of-the-year brain was well served by the burlesque of selfish viscounts, conniving ladies of the house, and enterprising modistes. Less pleasurable were certain attempts at seriousness. Van Dusen’s version of nineteenth-century England is race-blind, and Simon’s refusal to propagate his seed has something to do with his father’s race shame. The grafting of contemporary politics onto the period piece feels extraneous and vague. Maybe this interracial-love fetish would have jelled better in the Obama era. “Love, your grace, conquers all,” Simon’s de-facto mother, Lady Danbury, tells him. “Love changes nothing,” he responds. ♦


newyorker--2020-12-28--Slide Show: New Yorker Cartoons January 4 & 11, 2021

“ What do you think he pays for a lair like this ?
”

“What do you think he pays for a lair like this?”
Cartoon by Benjamin Schwartz


The Plague Year

Operation Warp Speed , the government initiative to accelerate vaccine development , may prove to be the Administration ’ s most notable success in the pandemic .
Moderna ’ s vaccine secured approval next .
Its formulation proved to be 94.1 per cent effective in preventing infection and , so far , it has been a hundred per cent effective in preventing serious disease .
Graham is happy that he chose to work with Moderna .
In 2016 , his lab developed a vaccine for Zika , a new virus that caused birth defects .
His department did everything itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we made the DNA , we did Phase I clinical trials , and then we developed the regulatory apparatus to take it into Central and South America and the Caribbean , to test it for efficacy.
” The effort nearly broke the staff .
Moderna was an ideal partner for the COVID project , Graham told me .
Its messenger-RNA vector was far more potent than the DNA vaccine that Graham ’ s lab had been using .
In another major development , Eli Lilly recently received an Emergency Use Authorization for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the spike protein that Graham and McLellan designed .
It is similar to the treatment that President Trump received when he contracted COVID .
Graham had been in his home office , in Rockville , Maryland , when he got a call telling him that the Pfizer vaccine was breathtakingly effective—far better than could have been hoped for .
“ It was just hard to imagine , ” he told me .
He walked into the kitchen to share the news with his wife .
Their son and grandchildren were visiting .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s working.
’ I could barely get the words out .
Then I just had to go back into my study , because I had this major relief .
All that had been built up over those ten months just came out.
” He sat at his desk and wept .
His family gathered around him .
He hadn ’ t cried that hard since his father died .
Graham and his colleagues will not become rich from their creation : intellectual-property royalties will go to the federal government .
Yet he feels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of my life has come together in this outbreak , ” he told me .
“ The work on enhanced disease , the work on RSV structure , the work on coronavirus and pandemic preparedness , along with all the things I learned and experienced about racial issues in this country .
It feels like some kind of destiny.
” As the coronavirus withdrew from Bellevue , it left perplexity behind .
Why did death rates decline ?
Had face masks diminished the viral loads transmitted to infected people ?
Nate Link thinks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been helpful .
Remdesivir cuts mortality by seventy per cent in patients on low levels of oxygen , though it has no impact on people on ventilators .
Amit Uppal told me that the hospital has improved at managing COVID .
“ We now understand the potential courses of the disease , ” he said .
Doctors have become more skilled at assessing who requires a ventilator , who might be stabilized with oxygen , who needs blood-thinning medication .
Then again , the main factor behind superior outcomes may be that patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a patient is discharged , the event offers a rare moment for the staff to celebrate .
On August 4th , a beaming Chris Rogan , twenty-nine years old , was wheeled by his wife , Crystal , through a gantlet of cheering health-care workers , in scrubs and masks .
There were balloons and bouquets .
After so much death , a miracle had occurred .
Rogan was an account manager for a health-insurance firm in midtown .
Crystal was a teaching assistant .
In late March , he developed a low-grade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wasn ’ t coughing .
His doctor said that he probably had the flu .
Rogan grew increasingly lethargic .
He developed pneumonia .
An ambulance took him to Metropolitan Hospital , on the Upper East Side .
He still felt O.K.
, even when his oxygen level fell to sixty-four per cent .
An hour after he checked in , he couldn ’ t breathe .
He was placed in a medically induced coma and intubated for nine days .
During that time , the ventilator clogged and Rogan ’ s heart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was brought back to consciousness , a doctor asked , “ Did you see anything while you were dead ?
” “ No , ” Rogan said .
“ I don ’ t even remember being resuscitated.
” He began experiencing what hospital staffers told him was I.C.U .
psychosis .
He told Crystal that he ’ d been stabbed as a child .
He began conversing with God .
Just before he was intubated again , on April 15th , he felt certain that he would die in the hospital .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days .
During that time , he was transferred to Bellevue , which was better equipped to handle him .
It ’ s a mistake to think that a patient in a coma is totally unaware .
Rogan swam in and out of near-consciousness .
When his doctor came in , he tried to talk to him : “ Why am I awake ?
Why can ’ t I move ?
” He couldn ’ t sleep , because his eyes were partly open .
“ It ’ s like being buried alive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tenth wedding anniversary passed .
Sometimes he heard Crystal ’ s voice on video chat .
“ I hear you , ” he ’ d say , but she couldn ’ t hear him .
“ I feel the tube down my throat , tell them to take me off the vent.
” A machine kept pumping oxygen into his lungs : psht !
psht !
psht !
The sound pounded in his head .
He would dream that he had left the hospital , then wake to find himself still there , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was fucking torture , ” he said .
He developed internal bleeding .
Clots formed in his legs .
He told God that he didn ’ t want to die—that he had too much left to do .
God assured him that he was going to make it .
Crystal was charged with making choices for Rogan ’ s care .
The hardest one was the decision to amputate his right leg .
It took three days to get him stable enough to perform the operation , which had to be done at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fragile to move .
The doctors performed a guillotine amputation , just below the knee .
Eight days later , they had to take off the knee .
Rogan doesn ’ t remember any of that .
Some days , he is elated to be alive ; other times , he asks himself , “ What kind of quality of life is this ?
” Whether or not it was I.C.U .
psychosis , he ’ s clung to the experience of talking with God .
When he emerged from the coma , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but now his right hand is functional .
After several weeks of rehab , he can walk a bit with a prosthetic leg .
When he fell ill , there were only a hundred and fifty thousand cases in the U.S .
When he left the hospital , there were more than four million .
On September 9th , our grandchild Gioia was born .
She is the dearest creature .
We stare into each other ’ s eyes in wonder .
Even in this intimate moment , though , the menace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more likely to infect the people we love than anyone else .
Deborah Birx has recalled that , in 1918 , her grandmother , aged eleven , brought the flu home from school to her mother , who died of it .
“ I can tell you , my grandmother lived with that for eighty-eight years , ” she said .
Pottinger ’ s White House experience has made him acutely aware of what he calls “ the fading art of leadership.
” It ’ s not a failure of one party or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a generational decline of good judgment .
“ The élites think it ’ s all about expertise , ” he said .
It ’ s important to have experts , but they aren ’ t always right : they can be “ hampered by their own orthodoxies , their own egos , their own narrow approach to the world.
” Pottinger went on , “ You need broad-minded leaders who know how to hold people accountable , who know how to delegate , who know a good chain of command , and know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of October , before returning to D.C. , Pottinger went on a trail ride in the Wasatch Range .
As it happened , Birx was in Salt Lake City .
Utah had just hit a record number of new cases .
On the ride , an alarm sounded on Pottinger ’ s cell phone in the saddlebag .
It was an alert : “ Almost every single county is a high transmission area .
Hospitals are nearly overwhelmed .
By public health order , masks are required in high transmission areas.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Debi must have met with the governor.
” “ One out of eight hundred Black Americans who were alive in January is now dead , ” Hilton told me .
“ There would be another twenty thousand alive if they died at the same rate as Caucasians.
” She added , “ If I can just get my immediate family through this year alive , we will have succeeded.
” She and two colleagues have written a letter to the Congressional Black Caucus proposing the creation of a federal Department of Equity , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to such disparate health outcomes .
Infected people keep showing up at U.Va.
’ s hospital at a dismaying pace .
Hilton recently attended the hospital ’ s first lung transplant for a COVID patient .
He survived .
Lately , more young people , including children , have populated the COVID wards .
Hospitals and clinics all over the country have been struggling financially , and many health-care workers , including Hilton , have taken pay cuts .
Thanksgiving in Little Africa is usually a giant family reunion .
Everyone comes home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practically every house belongs to someone in Hilton ’ s family ; people eat turkey in one house and dessert in another .
Hilton hasn ’ t seen her family for ten months .
She spent Thanksgiving alone in Charlottesville , with her dogs .
Her access to the President had been cut off since the summer , and , with that , her ability to influence policy .
She had become a lightning rod for the Administration ’ s policies .
Then , in December , a news report revealed that she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counter to the C.D.C.
’ s recommendation .
She was plunged into a cold bath of Schadenfreude .
Old photographs resurfaced online , making it look as if she were currently attending Christmas parties .
Birx indicated that she might soon leave government service .
Austin bills itself as the “ Live Music Capital of the World , ” but the bars and dance halls are largely closed .
Threadgill ’ s , the roadhouse where Janis Joplin got her start , is being torn down .
The clubs on Sixth Street , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , haven ’ t been open for months .
A band I play in has performed in many of them , but for the past several years we had a regular gig at the Skylark Lounge , a shack tucked behind an auto-body shop .
Johnny LaTouf runs the place with his ex-wife , Mary .
It ’ s been shut since March 15th .
“ All small businesses have been affected , but music venues around the country were already in a struggle , ” Johnny told me .
He ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three family members .
That ’ s only part of the damage .
“ When the musicians get laid off and the bands disperse and go their separate ways , then you ’ ve actually broken up their business.
” He added , “ COVID killed off more than people with preëxisting conditions .
Lots of businesses have preëxisting conditions.
” Lavelle White , born in 1929 , was still singing the blues at Skylark until the doors closed .
“ Some of our greater musicians are older , because it takes a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Johnny said .
Skylark was a mixing bowl where younger musicians learned from their elders .
“ Now that pathway is broken.
” When Congress passed the CARES Act , which included money to support small businesses , local bars were not a priority .
“ There ’ s no money , ” Johnny said Wells Fargo told him .
He helps several older musicians with groceries , but he doesn ’ t know how many in that crowd will ever return .
Some have died from COVID .
The other quality is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ done relatively well during this crisis have been led by strong , compassionate , decisive leaders who speak candidly with their constituents .
In Vermont , Governor Phil Scott , a Republican , closed the state early , and reopened cautiously , keeping the number of cases and the death toll low .
“ This should be the model for the country , ” Fauci told state leaders , in September .
If the national fatality rate were the same as Vermont ’ s , some two hundred and fifty thousand Americans would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has fewer than a million people , but so does South Dakota , which was topping a thousand cases a day in November .
Scott ordered a statewide shutdown in March , which caused an immediate economic contraction .
Governor Noem opposed mandates of any sort , betting that South Dakotans would act in their best interests while keeping the economy afloat .
Vermont ’ s economy has recovered , with an unemployment rate of 3.2 per cent—nearly the same as South Dakota ’ s .
But South Dakota has seen twelve times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the state ’ s chief medical officer , Joneigh Khaldun , is a Black emergency-room doctor .
“ She was one of the first to look at the demographics of COVID and highlight that we have a real racial disparity here , ” Governor Whitmer told me .
“ Fourteen per cent of our population is Black , as were forty per cent of the early deaths.
” The state launched an aggressive outreach to Black communities .
By August , the rates of both cases and fatalities for Blacks were the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vast differences in outcomes among the states underscore the absence of a national plan .
The U.S. accounts for a fifth of the world ’ s COVID deaths , despite having only four per cent of the population .
In August , the Pew Research Center surveyed people from fourteen advanced countries to see how they viewed the world during the pandemic .
Ninety-five per cent of Danish respondents said that their country had handled the crisis capably .
In Australia , the figure was ninety-four per cent .
The U.S. and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ majority believed otherwise .
In Denmark , seventy-two per cent said that the country has become more unified since the contagion emerged .
Eighteen per cent of Americans felt this way .

Rogan doesn’t remember any of that. Some days, he is elated to be alive; other times, he asks himself, “What kind of quality of life is this?” Whether or not it was I.C.U. psychosis, he’s clung to the experience of talking with God.
When he emerged from the coma, he couldn’t move his arms, but now his right hand is functional. After several weeks of rehab, he can walk a bit with a prosthetic leg.
When he fell ill, there were only a hundred and fifty thousand cases in the U.S. When he left the hospital, there were more than four million.
The death toll kept mounting, surpassing three hundred thousand at year’s end. Some victims were famous. The playwright Terrence McNally was one of the first. The virus also killed Charley Pride, the first Black singer in the Country Music Hall of Fame, and Tom Seaver, one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. Eighty per cent of fatalities have been in people aged sixty-five or older, and most victims are male. It’s been strange to find myself in the vulnerable population. I’m a year younger than Trump, so his adventure with COVID was of considerable interest to me. If I get ill, I’m not likely to receive the kind of treatment the President did, but I’m in better physical condition, despite a bout of cancer. My wife, though, has compromised lungs. Even before the coronavirus put a target on our age group, mortality was much on my mind. Sometimes I’m dumbstruck by how long I’ve lived; when I’m filling out a form on the Internet, and I come to a drop-down menu for year of birth, the years fly by, past the loss of parents and friends, past wars and assassinations, past Presidential Administrations.
On September 9th, our grandchild Gioia was born. She is the dearest creature. We stare into each other’s eyes in wonder. Even in this intimate moment, though, the menace of contagion is present: we are more likely to infect the people we love than anyone else. Deborah Birx has recalled that, in 1918, her grandmother, aged eleven, brought the flu home from school to her mother, who died of it. “I can tell you, my grandmother lived with that for eighty-eight years,” she said.
Even before the election, Matt and Yen Pottinger had decided that they were tired of Washington. He was burned out on the task force, which had drifted into irrelevance as the Administration embraced magical thinking. They drove west, looking for a new place to live, and settled on a ski town in Utah. Matt will join Yen there once he wraps up his job in Washington.
Pottinger’s White House experience has made him acutely aware of what he calls “the fading art of leadership.” It’s not a failure of one party or another; it’s more of a generational decline of good judgment. “The élites think it’s all about expertise,” he said. It’s important to have experts, but they aren’t always right: they can be “hampered by their own orthodoxies, their own egos, their own narrow approach to the world.” Pottinger went on, “You need broad-minded leaders who know how to hold people accountable, who know how to delegate, who know a good chain of command, and know how to make hard judgments.”
At the end of October, before returning to D.C., Pottinger went on a trail ride in the Wasatch Range. As it happened, Birx was in Salt Lake City. Utah had just hit a record number of new cases. On the ride, an alarm sounded on Pottinger’s cell phone in the saddlebag. It was an alert: “Almost every single county is a high transmission area. Hospitals are nearly overwhelmed. By public health order, masks are required in high transmission areas.”
Pottinger said to himself, “Debi must have met with the governor.”
Covid has been hard on Little Africa. “Some of our church members have passed, and quite a few of our friends,” Mary Hilton, Ebony’s mother, told me recently. “We just buried one yesterday. They’re dropping everywhere. It’s so scary.” A cousin is in the hospital.
“One out of eight hundred Black Americans who were alive in January is now dead,” Hilton told me. “There would be another twenty thousand alive if they died at the same rate as Caucasians.” She added, “If I can just get my immediate family through this year alive, we will have succeeded.” She and two colleagues have written a letter to the Congressional Black Caucus proposing the creation of a federal Department of Equity, to address the practices that have led to such disparate health outcomes.
Infected people keep showing up at U.Va.’s hospital at a dismaying pace. Hilton recently attended the hospital’s first lung transplant for a COVID patient. He survived. Lately, more young people, including children, have populated the COVID wards. Hospitals and clinics all over the country have been struggling financially, and many health-care workers, including Hilton, have taken pay cuts.
Thanksgiving in Little Africa is usually a giant family reunion. Everyone comes home. There’s one street where practically every house belongs to someone in Hilton’s family; people eat turkey in one house and dessert in another. Hilton hasn’t seen her family for ten months. She spent Thanksgiving alone in Charlottesville, with her dogs.
Thanksgiving was Deborah Birx’s first day off in months. She and her husband have a house in Washington, D.C., and her daughter’s family lives in nearby Potomac, Maryland. During the pandemic, they have been a pod. Recently, Birx bought another house, in Delaware, and after Thanksgiving she, her husband, and her daughter’s family spent the weekend there.
Her access to the President had been cut off since the summer, and, with that, her ability to influence policy. She had become a lightning rod for the Administration’s policies. Then, in December, a news report revealed that she had travelled over the Thanksgiving weekend, counter to the C.D.C.’s recommendation. She was plunged into a cold bath of Schadenfreude. Old photographs resurfaced online, making it look as if she were currently attending Christmas parties.
Birx indicated that she might soon leave government service.
20. Surrender
Austin bills itself as the “Live Music Capital of the World,” but the bars and dance halls are largely closed. Threadgill’s, the roadhouse where Janis Joplin got her start, is being torn down. The clubs on Sixth Street, Austin’s answer to Bourbon Street, haven’t been open for months. A band I play in has performed in many of them, but for the past several years we had a regular gig at the Skylark Lounge, a shack tucked behind an auto-body shop. Johnny LaTouf runs the place with his ex-wife, Mary. It’s been shut since March 15th.
“All small businesses have been affected, but music venues around the country were already in a struggle,” Johnny told me. He’s had to let go his ten employees—including three family members. That’s only part of the damage. “When the musicians get laid off and the bands disperse and go their separate ways, then you’ve actually broken up their business.” He added, “COVID killed off more than people with preëxisting conditions. Lots of businesses have preëxisting conditions.”
Lavelle White, born in 1929, was still singing the blues at Skylark until the doors closed. “Some of our greater musicians are older, because it takes a lifetime to master the craft,” Johnny said. Skylark was a mixing bowl where younger musicians learned from their elders. “Now that pathway is broken.”
When Congress passed the CARES Act, which included money to support small businesses, local bars were not a priority. “There’s no money,” Johnny said Wells Fargo told him. He helps several older musicians with groceries, but he doesn’t know how many in that crowd will ever return. Some have died from COVID.
Two qualities determine success or failure in dealing with the COVID contagion. One is experience. Some places that had been seared by past diseases applied those lessons to the current pandemic. Vietnam, Taiwan, and Hong Kong had been touched by sars. Saudi Arabia has done better than many countries, perhaps because of its history with mers (and the fact that many women routinely wear facial coverings). Africa has a surprisingly low infection rate. The continent’s younger demographic has helped, but it is also likely that South Africa’s experience with H.I.V./AIDS, and the struggle of other African countries with Ebola, have schooled the continent in the mortal danger of ignoring medical advice.
The other quality is leadership. Nations and states that have done relatively well during this crisis have been led by strong, compassionate, decisive leaders who speak candidly with their constituents. In Vermont, Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, closed the state early, and reopened cautiously, keeping the number of cases and the death toll low. “This should be the model for the country,” Fauci told state leaders, in September. If the national fatality rate were the same as Vermont’s, some two hundred and fifty thousand Americans would still be alive. Granted, Vermont has fewer than a million people, but so does South Dakota, which was topping a thousand cases a day in November. Scott ordered a statewide shutdown in March, which caused an immediate economic contraction. Governor Noem opposed mandates of any sort, betting that South Dakotans would act in their best interests while keeping the economy afloat. Vermont’s economy has recovered, with an unemployment rate of 3.2 per cent—nearly the same as South Dakota’s. But South Dakota has seen twelve times as many deaths.
In Michigan, the state’s chief medical officer, Joneigh Khaldun, is a Black emergency-room doctor. “She was one of the first to look at the demographics of COVID and highlight that we have a real racial disparity here,” Governor Whitmer told me. “Fourteen per cent of our population is Black, as were forty per cent of the early deaths.” The state launched an aggressive outreach to Black communities. By August, the rates of both cases and fatalities for Blacks were the same as—or lower than—those for whites. The vast differences in outcomes among the states underscore the absence of a national plan. The U.S. accounts for a fifth of the world’s COVID deaths, despite having only four per cent of the population.
In August, the Pew Research Center surveyed people from fourteen advanced countries to see how they viewed the world during the pandemic. Ninety-five per cent of Danish respondents said that their country had handled the crisis capably. In Australia, the figure was ninety-four per cent. The U.S. and the U.K. were the only countries where a majority believed otherwise. In Denmark, seventy-two per cent said that the country has become more unified since the contagion emerged. Eighteen per cent of Americans felt this way.
On March 16th, Trump issued nationwide guidelines for closing schools, shutting down bars and restaurants, and limiting unnecessary travel and social gatherings. But that day marked a turning point. In his conversation with governors, he abandoned any effort to coalesce a national plan, and his Administration began undercutting governors’ attempts to acquire P.P.E. Then, on April 3rd, Trump undermined the C.D.C.’s guidance on wearing masks: “You don’t have to do it. I’m choosing not to do it. But some people may want to do it.”
Trump, by his words and his example, became not a leader but a saboteur. He subverted his health agencies by installing political operatives who meddled with the science and suppressed the truth. His crowded, unmasked political rallies were reckless acts of effrontery. In his Tulsa speech, he said that he’d asked his health officials to “slow the testing down”—impeding data collection just to make his Administration look better. When the inevitable happened, and he contracted the disease, he almost certainly spread it. Every guest at the Barrett reception tested negative for the virus before entering. Trump may well have been the superspreader at the Rose Garden event.
The President could have tried to bring the country together. In the press conference where he said that he wouldn’t wear a mask, he praised the efforts of the Democratic governors of New York and New Jersey; he expressed sympathy for Michiganders, who were “getting hit very, very hard.” He announced federal efforts to aid New York City. “America is engaged in a historic battle to safeguard the lives of our citizens,” he said. “Our greatest weapon is the discipline and determination of every citizen to stay at home and stay healthy.” The man who said those words might have been the President the country needed. But he was not that man.
He campaigned against Biden, but mainly he campaigned against the disease. “When the year started, he appeared unbeatable,” Senator Lee told me. “My Democratic colleagues were discouraged about their chances. By the end of the impeachment trial, when we began hearing about the virus, we were not sure it would be a big deal. But it put an end to one of the things the President is best at—those big rallies.” When Trump finally resumed them, defying medical advice, his fury was volcanic. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” he grumbled on October 19th, when the number of new cases exceeded sixty-five thousand. “COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID!” he said at a rally in North Carolina, five days later. “We’re doing great. Our numbers are incredible.” That day, nearly eighty thousand new cases were reported, overshadowing the highest levels of the summer. In Omaha, on October 27th, he said of COVID, “I’m here, right? . . . I had it.” Hospitalizations were up forty-six per cent that month. He ignored the fever sweeping through the Mountain West and the Great Plains—Trump country. His slogan was both cynical and fatuous: “If I can get better, anybody can get better.”
Infections often rose in counties where Trump held a rally. The surge in infections and deaths mocked his assertions that we were “rounding the turn.” The disease stalked him; it encircled him. On October 25th, Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, declared, “We are not going to control the pandemic.” The Administration had given up.


newyorker--2020-12-28--The New Yorker’s Year in Poetry

The New Yorker’s Year in Poetry

“ Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower / and snowshoes , ” Ada Limón declares , in “ The End of Poetry ” —a fitting poem to mark a year that words largely seemed to fail .
For all the coinages and clichés that have proliferated in these uncertain times— “ social distance , ” “ flatten the curve , ” “ an abundance of caution ” —what combination of letters could truly describe , much less mitigate , the grief and absurdity that 2020 hath wrought ?
“ Enough of the will to go on and not go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does a certain thing , ” Limón laments , exasperated by the lyric ’ s simultaneous overabundance and insufficiency , its inability—or refusal—to reach beyond itself .
Yet even after “ enough of pointing to the world , weary / and desperate , ” after “ enough sorrow , enough of the air and its ease , ” there remains an inextinguishable need , a spark of yearning that returns us to a purpose , a point of origin , the other end of poetry : “ I am asking you to touch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yorker published in 2020 reflects a year of unprecedented challenges and calls for long-overdue societal change .
Many poets responded directly to current events , capturing the pervasive sense of precariousness , isolation , and loss that descended with COVID-19 , and joining their voices to the mass civil-rights uprisings that ignited amid the pandemic ’ s ravages .
But poetry can speak beyond the present moment , as well as to it ; whether topical or not , these poems insist on language as a renewable source of resilience , ingenuity , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from widely beloved writers such as Jorie Graham , Rita Dove , Margaret Atwood , and Yusef Komunyakaa , we welcomed several first-time contributors to our pages , including Camille Rankine , Maggie Smith , Saeed Jones , Nicholas Goodly , and Kim Addonizio .
We presented a new poem by Louise Glück , who won this year ’ s Nobel Prize in Literature .
We featured translations of poems originally written in Chinese , by Yi Lei ( translated by Tracy K. Smith and Changtai Bi ) ; in Polish , by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) ; and in Basque , by Kirmen Uribe ( translated by Elizabeth Macklin ) .
And we published two poems by the late Irish poet Eavan Boland , whose “ Eviction ” ( which , coincidentally , appeared in print on the day of Boland ’ s death ) is a trenchant , timely tribute to the particular lives and struggles that are too often effaced from official narratives of history .
A glance at our year in poetry follows ; to read these poems in full , and to find many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ From the Catalogue of Cruelty , ” by Donika Kelly ( January 6th ) Once , I slapped my sister with the back of my hand .
We were so small , but I wanted to know how it felt : my hand raised high across the opposite shoulder , slicing down like a trapeze .
Her face caught my hand .
I ’ d slapped her in our yellow room with circus animals on the curtains .
I don ’ t remember how it felt .
I was a rough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found ways not to exist , happily , playfully , thriving on no-fish a billion billion years before the universe exploded .
No one missed us , we didn ’ t miss ourselves .
There was no absence .
I spent a certain amount of cash at Forbidden Planet Tower Records , the corner store on 9th & 1st , southeast corner , the corner store on 9th & 1st southwest corner the corner store on 7th & 1st , northwest corner , the candy shop on 1st between 7th & 8th with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the pizza parlor on St. Marks & A , southwest corner with Moon Patrol , the candy shoppe on A between 8th & 9th with Double Dragon .
.
.
I was already a grad student in upstate New York And down in South Texas for the winter break Between semesters of reading Adichie and Alexie And risking words together to find something Like the point of this , some search for the reason For the speaker ’ s love of poems , that pull Of the written word as artifact , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sometimes overwhelming sadness about all of it— you ride the surge into summer— smell of piñon crackling in the fireplace— blued notes of a saxophone in the air— not by sand running through an hourglass but by our bodies igniting— passing in the form of vapors from a living body— this world of orange sunlight and wildfire haze— “ At the Ruins of Yankee Stadium , ” by Campbell McGrath ( April 27th ) I remember the parties we used to throw on Jane Street , shots of tequila and De La Soul @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , everyone young and vibrant and vivacious— decades later we discovered a forgotten videotape and our sons , watching with bemused alarm , blurted out , Mom , you were so beautiful !
She was .
We all were , everyone except the city .
The city was a wreck and then it was a renovation project and now it is a playground of privilege and soon it will be something else , liquid as a dream .
My subject is the part wishing plays in the way villages are made to vanish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ separate memory from knowledge , so one was volatile , one was not and how I started writing , burning light , building heat until all at once I was the fire gilder ready to lay radiance down .
.
.
but their uniforms are strange .
Chuck suspects they ’ re really salesmen .
Their leader stands too close as he begins his pitch— “ In Quarantine , I Reflect on the Death of Ophelia , ” by Elisa Gonzalez ( May 25th ) Time to stay indoors , the doctor says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the open window betrays that not everyone ’ s voice dies to solitude .
Shut up , shut up !
the window slams .
Time to embrace the virtues of boredom , the price of happiness again , after .
The window shows men digging a place for survivors of the future , the rich ones .
It will be a condo tower , glass walls for better envy .
They ’ ve built the frames , I see , around the holes where doors will someday go .
Capitalism !
So full @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unincorporated I was without a body I was lots Not lots yet parcels I was ground Where the pipes will go I was shrubs I was Brush and the space You can be a bother who dyes his hair Dennis Rodman blue in the face of the man kneeling in blue in the face the music of his wrist- watch your mouth is little more than a door being knocked out of the ring of fire around the afternoon came evening ’ s bell of the ball and chain around the neck of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Evenings were getting cool .
The walk over the bridge downtown felt dangerously long when it was dark .
Did the young man who offered me a ride tell me his name ?
What was it about him that made me say Yes thanks , like a damn fool ?
When we were in his car and he said oops , he had forgotten something at his place he had to pick up , and asked if I ’ d mind if we stopped there , why did I say O.K.
?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , except where they have flattened it .
Have they been here the full length of the night , or just the previous hour ?
Who are they for whom the grass is a bed ?
Who are those others , elsewhere , sleeping in the open back of a truck , or on the ground behind a guarded fence ?
I am walking in the countryside , so maybe they are people of myth .
Or they are people of a labor I know nothing about .
Where are you gone , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far from home ?
Days are long .
Even the heat is lovelier there , as memory is .
We make lemonade from powder .
Little wonder the years are less than a breath , like a song on the radio heard as the rhythm of languor .
“ Ode to Patrick Kearns , Funeral Director of the Leo F. Kearns Funeral Home , in Queens , ” by Diane Mehta ( August 24th ) By blood we go into the fabric of what once felt hymnal at worst ; we are tuned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invented , not imagined rites of spring but last rites in strange establishments .
Trucks collect the dead and roll uptown to bury in a potter ’ s field corpses we knew , and loved , their long solemn graves together , better here than bodies shelved or stacks of flesh shipped out of state to cremate or left to rot .
Antigone , dead siblings are set .
As for the living , pick me for a sister .
Landlady , I make the rounds of graves keeping up my family ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might be did the artist consider the impossibility of defining nothing without speaking of absence without speaking

“Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower / and snowshoes,” Ada Limón declares, in “The End of Poetry”—a fitting poem to mark a year that words largely seemed to fail. For all the coinages and clichés that have proliferated in these uncertain times—“social distance,” “flatten the curve,” “an abundance of caution”—what combination of letters could truly describe, much less mitigate, the grief and absurdity that 2020 hath wrought? “Enough of the will to go on and not go on or how / a certain light does a certain thing,” Limón laments, exasperated by the lyric’s simultaneous overabundance and insufficiency, its inability—or refusal—to reach beyond itself. Yet even after “enough of pointing to the world, weary / and desperate,” after “enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,” there remains an inextinguishable need, a spark of yearning that returns us to a purpose, a point of origin, the other end of poetry: “I am asking you to touch me.”
The poetry that The New Yorker published in 2020 reflects a year of unprecedented challenges and calls for long-overdue societal change. Many poets responded directly to current events, capturing the pervasive sense of precariousness, isolation, and loss that descended with COVID-19, and joining their voices to the mass civil-rights uprisings that ignited amid the pandemic’s ravages. But poetry can speak beyond the present moment, as well as to it; whether topical or not, these poems insist on language as a renewable source of resilience, ingenuity, and human connection.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
Along with offerings from widely beloved writers such as Jorie Graham, Rita Dove, Margaret Atwood, and Yusef Komunyakaa, we welcomed several first-time contributors to our pages, including Camille Rankine, Maggie Smith, Saeed Jones, Nicholas Goodly, and Kim Addonizio. We presented a new poem by Louise Glück, who won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. We featured translations of poems originally written in Chinese, by Yi Lei (translated by Tracy K. Smith and Changtai Bi); in Polish, by Tadeusz Dąbrowski (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones); and in Basque, by Kirmen Uribe (translated by Elizabeth Macklin). And we published two poems by the late Irish poet Eavan Boland, whose “Eviction” (which, coincidentally, appeared in print on the day of Boland’s death) is a trenchant, timely tribute to the particular lives and struggles that are too often effaced from official narratives of history.
A glance at our year in poetry follows; to read these poems in full, and to find many others, visit the complete poetry archive.
“From the Catalogue of Cruelty,” by Donika Kelly (January 6th)
Once, I slapped my sister with the back of my hand.
We were so small, but I wanted to know
how it felt: my hand raised high across
the opposite shoulder, slicing down like a trapeze.
Her face caught my hand. I’d slapped her in our
yellow room with circus animals
on the curtains. I don’t remember
how it felt. I was a rough child.
“The Body,” by D. Nurkse (January 13th)
Before we were born
we found ways not to exist,
happily, playfully,
thriving on no-fish
a billion billion years
before the universe exploded.
No one missed us,
we didn’t miss ourselves.
There was no absence.
“Pregrets,” by Anselm Berrigan (January 27th)
I spent a certain amount of cash at Forbidden Planet
Tower Records, the corner store on 9th & 1st, southeast
corner, the corner store on 9th & 1st southwest corner
the corner store on 7th & 1st, northwest corner, the
candy shop on 1st between 7th & 8th with the Mr. Do!
standup video game, the pizza parlor on St. Marks &
A, southwest corner with Moon Patrol, the candy shoppe
on A between 8th & 9th with Double Dragon . . .
“March 3,” by Eileen Myles (March 9th)
The quick
exchange
of emails
between
the former
lovers creates
a soft hole
in the day
and the
night
before.
“Shelter,” by José Antonio Rodríguez (April 6th)
I was already a grad student in upstate New York
And down in South Texas for the winter break
Between semesters of reading Adichie and Alexie
And risking words together to find something
Like the point of this, some search for the reason
For the speaker’s love of poems, that pull
Of the written word as artifact, as a kind of tool
Against the sometimes overwhelming sadness about all of it—
“Transpirations,” by Arthur Sze (April 13th)
you ride the surge into summer—
smell of piñon crackling in the fireplace—
blued notes of a saxophone in the air—
not by sand running through an hourglass but by our bodies igniting—
passing in the form of vapors from a living body—
this world of orange sunlight and wildfire haze—
“At the Ruins of Yankee Stadium,” by Campbell McGrath (April 27th)
I remember the parties we used to throw on Jane Street,
shots of tequila and De La Soul on the tape deck, everyone
dancing, everyone young and vibrant and vivacious—
decades later we discovered a forgotten videotape
and our sons, watching with bemused alarm, blurted out,
Mom, you were so beautiful! She was. We all were,
everyone except the city. The city was a wreck and then
it was a renovation project and now it is a playground of privilege
and soon it will be something else, liquid as a dream.
“The Fire Gilder,” by Eavan Boland (May 11th)
My subject is the part wishing plays in
the way villages are made
to vanish, in the way I learned
to separate memory from knowledge,
so one was volatile, one was not
and how I started writing,
burning light,
building heat until all at once
I was the fire gilder
ready to lay radiance down . . .
“Our Days,” by Rae Armantrout (May 18th)
They say they’ve come
to establish order,
but their uniforms are strange.
Chuck suspects they’re really salesmen.
Their leader stands too close
as he begins his pitch—
close enough to spread a virus.
“In Quarantine, I Reflect on the Death of Ophelia,” by Elisa Gonzalez (May 25th)
Time to stay indoors, the doctor says, all the doctors say,
but the open window betrays that not everyone’s voice dies to solitude.
Shut up, shut up! the window slams.
Time to embrace the virtues of boredom, the price of happiness again, after.
The window shows men digging a place for survivors of the future, the rich ones.
It will be a condo tower, glass walls for better envy.
They’ve built the frames, I see, around the holes where doors will someday go.
Capitalism! So full of holes and hope.
“Pastoral,” by Melissa Ginsburg (June 8th)
I was unincorporated
I was without a body
I was lots
Not lots yet parcels
I was ground
Where the pipes will go
I was shrubs I was
Brush and the space
Between shacks I lacked
Governance . . .
“George Floyd,” by Terrance Hayes (June 22nd)
You can be a bother who dyes
his hair Dennis Rodman blue
in the face of the man kneeling in blue
in the face the music of his wrist-
watch your mouth is little more
than a door being knocked
out of the ring of fire around
the afternoon came evening’s bell
of the ball and chain around the neck
of the unarmed brother . . .
“Pigeon and Hawk,” by Marilyn Nelson (June 22nd)
October. Evenings were getting cool.
The walk over the bridge downtown
felt dangerously long when it was dark.
Did the young man who offered me a ride
tell me his name? What was it about him
that made me say Yes thanks, like a damn fool?
When we were in his car and he said oops,
he had forgotten something at his place
he had to pick up, and asked if I’d mind
if we stopped there, why did I say O.K.?
“The Field,” by Rick Barot (July 20th)
The field is askew with untended grass, except where
they have flattened it. Have they been here the full length
of the night, or just the previous hour?
Who are they for whom the grass is a bed? Who are those others,
elsewhere, sleeping in the open back of a truck,
or on the ground behind a guarded fence?
I am walking in the countryside, so maybe they are people of myth.
Or they are people of a labor I know nothing about.
“We Are Gone,” David Baker (August 3rd)


newyorker--2020-12-28--The Italian Novelist Who Envisioned a World Without Humanity

In 1973 , shortly after his last novel , like the others before it , was rejected by publishers , the Italian writer Guido Morselli shot himself in the head and died .
He left several rejection letters on his desk , and a short note that read , “ I bear no grudges.
” It was the kind of gesture one of his protagonists might have performed—a show of ironic detachment that belied a deep and obvious pain .
Morselli was sixty years old .
Before returning to his family ’ s home in Varese and ending his life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for two decades , on a small property in Lombardy , near the Swiss-Italian border .
There he tended to the land , made wine , and wrote books that faced diminishing odds of publication .
The last one that he finished tells the story of an apocalyptic event in which all of humanity suddenly vanishes , leaving a single man as the world ’ s only witness .
That book , “ Dissipatio H.G.
” ( NYRB Classics ) , has now been published in English , in a translation by Frederika @ @ @ @ @ @ @ translating Italian after experiencing health problems caused by a fall .
The plot begins with a botched suicide attempt : the unnamed narrator , a loner living in a retreat surrounded by meadows and glaciers , walks to a cave , on the eve of his fortieth birthday , intent on throwing himself down a well that leads to an underground lake .
“ Because the negative outweighed the positive , ” he explains .
“ On my scales .
By seventy percent .
Was that a banal motive ?
I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the well , he doesn ’ t so much lose heart as get distracted .
The mood is all wrong ; he feels calm , lucid , too upbeat to go through with it .
He is carrying a flashlight , which he flicks on and off .
“ Feet dangling in the dark , ” he takes a sip of the brandy he has brought with him and considers how the Spanish variety is better than the French and why this is so widely unappreciated .
Before leaving the cave , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and hears a peal of thunder : it ’ s the season ’ s first storm .
Back home , lying in bed and still dressed , annoyed at the last-minute change of plans , he picks up a gun , considering an easier solution .
He brings the “ black-eyed girl ” to his mouth and pulls the trigger , twice .
The gun doesn ’ t work .
He falls asleep .
The next morning , from his kitchen window he sees an overturned car in the distance .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might start over , in a way— “ return to the living , ” as he puts it .
But it is raining heavily , and when he reaches a flooded creek he returns home rather than try to cross it .
After changing clothes and drinking coffee , he walks to the closest village to tell the police about the accident .
But the station is empty .
Garages and hotels are , too .
What first looks like evidence of a national holiday takes on a more disturbing cast : the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without encountering a single person .
He finds several cars still running , and drives one to the nearest city , called Chrysopolis , in the hope of finding an explanation for the collective vanishing .
But this city , too , is empty , its sleek façades shuttered .
Morselli was born in 1912 , in Bologna , and grew up in a well-to-do family in Milan .
His father was a pharmaceutical executive and a member of Mussolini ’ s National Fascist Party .
When Morselli was ten , his mother @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Spanish flu , and she died two years later .
He spent his adolescence and early adulthood reluctantly placating and then frustrating his father ’ s hopes for his professional life , studying law and , after a stint in the Army , taking a job , for a short period , at a chemical company .
After the death of a sister , Morselli began receiving an allowance from his father , and decided to dedicate himself to writing .
He published two books , a long essay and a philosophical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at fiction were rejected .
In 1974 , shortly after his suicide , one of Italy ’ s most prestigious publishers , Adelphi , brought out his novel “ Rome Without the Pope.
” Written around 1966 , it ’ s a Surrealistic tale about a fictitious Pope who leaves the Vatican to live on the outskirts of Rome , where he plays tennis and ingests hallucinogens .
The reviews were enthusiastic .
More novels were published throughout the seventies and eighties , posthumously establishing Morselli as one of the country ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from genre to genre before ending with post-apocalyptic fiction ; the results are thrilling but uneven .
“ Divertimento 1889 , ” which was published in English in the eighties , and was admired by Shirley Hazzard , is a Belle Époque farce that revolves around an attempt by Umberto I—the King of Italy from 1878 to 1900 , when he was assassinated by an anarchist—to take a holiday , incognito , in the Swiss Alps .
It is occasionally funny , but often glib , as though the author were trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Morselli ’ s best novel is “ The Communist , ” published by NYRB Classics in 2017 , in another translation by Randall .
It is the story of Walter Ferranini , an Italian Communist who fights Franco in Spain and lives for a time in the United States before returning to Italy and joining Parliament .
As Ferranini ’ s political work grows distant from the grassroots labors that radicalized him , he comes unmoored ; political and personal crises coalesce and accrue .
Although Morselli ’ s father served in Parliament @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have been limited—and yet the book is one of the least condescending portraits of a mid-ranking politician you could imagine , illustrating the intersection of our public and private lives , and mixing the novel of ideas with social realism .
The tone of the book is melancholic , reminiscent of Morselli ’ s great contemporary Cesare Pavese , who killed himself with an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of forty-one .
“ Dissipatio H.G.
, ” despite its fanciful premise , may be Morselli ’ s most autobiographical book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a former newspaperman who has left the world behind to write in solitude , is essentially an alter ego .
The novel ’ s title comes from a phrase that the narrator claims to have recovered from an ancient text by the Syrian philosopher Iamblichus , a Neoplatonist .
It refers to the possibility that everyone might simply evaporate into thin air .
( Iamblichus was “ less catastrophic than other prophets , ” the narrator explains . )
Walking the streets of Chrysopolis , the narrator watches a hen strutting around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the steps of a bank .
“ The world has never been so alive as it is since a certain breed of bipeds disappeared , ” he thinks .
He never liked the city .
In the village near his retreat , alone on a bench , he is hyperattentive to the sounds lacing the general silence—a dripping drainpipe , the flick of a traffic light .
There are hints that something fantastical has occurred , perhaps connected with the storm that began while the narrator was in the cave .
But his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quickly dropped in favor of descriptions of the landscape and reflections on Durkheim , Pascal , and Hegel , among others .
He sets out to search for miners , on the theory that being in a cave might have shielded him from what he calls the Event , but one senses that he is looking more for diversion than for enlightenment .
Whatever has caused humankind ’ s disappearance remains obscure to him : Typically , stories about the near-extinction of humanity dramatize the process of decay , with lessons on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sense of community is shattered when people become desperate .
Mary Shelley ’ s “ The Last Man , ” published in 1826 , one of the earliest modern apocalyptic novels , chronicles humanity ’ s failure to face up to a global plague , resulting in a kind of Hobbesian conflict survived only by the title character .
That narrative trajectory now feels familiar .
But Morselli forgoes the drama of depopulation , reducing the genre ’ s basic premise to its essence and its aftermath .
His protagonist is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loner who has long since social-distanced , and flirted with self-annihilation .
Given the narrator ’ s—and Morselli ’ s—views on contemporary society and its endless efforts to eliminate all kinds of earthly friction , one may even read this end of the world as a kind of collective wish fulfillment .
One of the questions Morselli seems to have had on his mind is : How alive was everyone in the first place ?
With nothing to do but walk around and observe , the narrator finds himself surprisingly impressed by some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or at least by their stubborn persistence in the absence of humans .
A self-defined “ Anthropophobe , ” he begins to feel an unexpected sympathy for his fellow-man .
“ I waited for it to arrive and strike me , ” he says of whatever has disappeared everyone else : But this burst of attentiveness eventually gives way to sluggishness and despondency .
The narrator lets himself go , shaving less often , leaving the kitchen sink clogged and the bedsheets unchanged .
He develops a sweet tooth , feasting on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journal that he has barely started .
A sudden , invisible phenomenon that has emptied the streets of cities and villages , without fanfare or farewells , leaving our protagonist in a state of existential limbo : the echoes one finds in “ Dissipatio H.G.
” of life during the coronavirus pandemic are , at times , so glaring that some passages read like thinly fictionalized versions of the present .
Apocalyptic fiction is often disinterred amid catastrophes , either for their prescience or because they are paradoxically reassuring .
Each phase of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ novel , from the short-lived pleasure at nature ’ s reclaiming of old ground to the vague impulse to take notes and the growing pointlessness of grooming .
Morselli is drawn to anticlimaxes , resisting drama at every turn , and it is this instinct that makes his final book so resonant with certain experiences of the past year .
The tone of its post-apocalyptic world is not unceasing despair but melancholic inconsistency .
Desire is transient ; states of mind are fleeting and untrustworthy .
“ What for anyone else would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ horror , is something I ’ m able to float on in a paper boat , ” the narrator reflects .
“ A boat made of a few , mediocre , at times ironic , general ideas.
” In matching a world-weary protagonist to a depopulated planet , Morselli seems less interested in dissecting social shocks than in probing the porous border between blissful solitude and extreme loneliness .
As the novel progresses , the narrator ’ s account of his environment becomes increasingly unhinged .
The world , which at first looked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on vacation , ” becomes a “ tomb , wide open and empty.
” The narrator briefly hallucinates the voice of a long-dead psychiatrist named Karpinsky , who once treated him for a nervous condition .
He goes in search of this man , clinging to what is perhaps the one affectionate memory he has of another human being .
At times , his fear is all-encompassing , “ a gelid black substance in which I ’ m miserably , foolishly stuck , like a fly frozen in ice .
‘ Where can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ Where can I hide ?
’ And I understand that I can not go anywhere , the fear is all around , and identical.
” Randall , who died in May , in Rome , shortly after finishing her translation , manages to get across , in English , the bleakness of Morselli ’ s restraint .
At one point , the narrator returns to his retreat and , upon entering his storeroom , finds a cow munching on copies of one of his books .
The sight of his words being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ d get them back tomorrow , supposing I succeeded in milking her , my ideas finally remunerative , ” he thinks .
The ironic tone is characteristic of Morselli ’ s books , but there is a nervous edge to the joke .
Only someone well versed in loneliness—artistic , physical , emotional—could produce such a ruthlessly realistic account of an isolating catastrophe , tending to its false starts and its interruptions , its strange mixture of anxiety and tedium .
In the end , that experience had a price .
@

In 1973, shortly after his last novel, like the others before it, was rejected by publishers, the Italian writer Guido Morselli shot himself in the head and died. He left several rejection letters on his desk, and a short note that read, “I bear no grudges.” It was the kind of gesture one of his protagonists might have performed—a show of ironic detachment that belied a deep and obvious pain. Morselli was sixty years old. Before returning to his family’s home in Varese and ending his life, he had been living in near-isolation for two decades, on a small property in Lombardy, near the Swiss-Italian border. There he tended to the land, made wine, and wrote books that faced diminishing odds of publication. The last one that he finished tells the story of an apocalyptic event in which all of humanity suddenly vanishes, leaving a single man as the world’s only witness.
That book, “Dissipatio H.G.” (NYRB Classics), has now been published in English, in a translation by Frederika Randall, a journalist who turned to translating Italian after experiencing health problems caused by a fall. The plot begins with a botched suicide attempt: the unnamed narrator, a loner living in a retreat surrounded by meadows and glaciers, walks to a cave, on the eve of his fortieth birthday, intent on throwing himself down a well that leads to an underground lake. “Because the negative outweighed the positive,” he explains. “On my scales. By seventy percent. Was that a banal motive? I’m not sure.”
Sitting on the edge of the well, he doesn’t so much lose heart as get distracted. The mood is all wrong; he feels calm, lucid, too upbeat to go through with it. He is carrying a flashlight, which he flicks on and off. “Feet dangling in the dark,” he takes a sip of the brandy he has brought with him and considers how the Spanish variety is better than the French and why this is so widely unappreciated. Before leaving the cave, he bumps his head on a rock, and hears a peal of thunder: it’s the season’s first storm. Back home, lying in bed and still dressed, annoyed at the last-minute change of plans, he picks up a gun, considering an easier solution. He brings the “black-eyed girl” to his mouth and pulls the trigger, twice. The gun doesn’t work. He falls asleep.
“Eating in front of the computer is bad for you.” Cartoon by Özge Samanci Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
The next morning, from his kitchen window he sees an overturned car in the distance. He goes to help, thinking that he might start over, in a way—“return to the living,” as he puts it. But it is raining heavily, and when he reaches a flooded creek he returns home rather than try to cross it. After changing clothes and drinking coffee, he walks to the closest village to tell the police about the accident. But the station is empty. Garages and hotels are, too. What first looks like evidence of a national holiday takes on a more disturbing cast: the narrator roams one village and then another without encountering a single person. He finds several cars still running, and drives one to the nearest city, called Chrysopolis, in the hope of finding an explanation for the collective vanishing. But this city, too, is empty, its sleek façades shuttered.
Morselli was born in 1912, in Bologna, and grew up in a well-to-do family in Milan. His father was a pharmaceutical executive and a member of Mussolini’s National Fascist Party. When Morselli was ten, his mother was hospitalized for a long time with the Spanish flu, and she died two years later. He spent his adolescence and early adulthood reluctantly placating and then frustrating his father’s hopes for his professional life, studying law and, after a stint in the Army, taking a job, for a short period, at a chemical company. After the death of a sister, Morselli began receiving an allowance from his father, and decided to dedicate himself to writing. He published two books, a long essay and a philosophical dialogue, but all of his attempts at fiction were rejected. In 1974, shortly after his suicide, one of Italy’s most prestigious publishers, Adelphi, brought out his novel “Rome Without the Pope.” Written around 1966, it’s a Surrealistic tale about a fictitious Pope who leaves the Vatican to live on the outskirts of Rome, where he plays tennis and ingests hallucinogens. The reviews were enthusiastic. More novels were published throughout the seventies and eighties, posthumously establishing Morselli as one of the country’s most prominent postwar writers.
He hopped from genre to genre before ending with post-apocalyptic fiction; the results are thrilling but uneven. “Divertimento 1889,” which was published in English in the eighties, and was admired by Shirley Hazzard, is a Belle Époque farce that revolves around an attempt by Umberto I—the King of Italy from 1878 to 1900, when he was assassinated by an anarchist—to take a holiday, incognito, in the Swiss Alps. It is occasionally funny, but often glib, as though the author were trying to mimic the shallowness of his subject. Morselli’s best novel is “The Communist,” published by NYRB Classics in 2017, in another translation by Randall. It is the story of Walter Ferranini, an Italian Communist who fights Franco in Spain and lives for a time in the United States before returning to Italy and joining Parliament. As Ferranini’s political work grows distant from the grassroots labors that radicalized him, he comes unmoored; political and personal crises coalesce and accrue. Although Morselli’s father served in Parliament, his own engagement with politics seems to have been limited—and yet the book is one of the least condescending portraits of a mid-ranking politician you could imagine, illustrating the intersection of our public and private lives, and mixing the novel of ideas with social realism. The tone of the book is melancholic, reminiscent of Morselli’s great contemporary Cesare Pavese, who killed himself with an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of forty-one.
“Dissipatio H.G.,” despite its fanciful premise, may be Morselli’s most autobiographical book: the erudite and neurotically self-aware narrator, a former newspaperman who has left the world behind to write in solitude, is essentially an alter ego. The novel’s title comes from a phrase that the narrator claims to have recovered from an ancient text by the Syrian philosopher Iamblichus, a Neoplatonist. It refers to the possibility that everyone might simply evaporate into thin air. (Iamblichus was “less catastrophic than other prophets,” the narrator explains.) Walking the streets of Chrysopolis, the narrator watches a hen strutting around and a horde of cats mating on the steps of a bank. “The world has never been so alive as it is since a certain breed of bipeds disappeared,” he thinks. He never liked the city. In the village near his retreat, alone on a bench, he is hyperattentive to the sounds lacing the general silence—a dripping drainpipe, the flick of a traffic light.
There are hints that something fantastical has occurred, perhaps connected with the storm that began while the narrator was in the cave. But his investigations into what actually took place are quickly dropped in favor of descriptions of the landscape and reflections on Durkheim, Pascal, and Hegel, among others. He sets out to search for miners, on the theory that being in a cave might have shielded him from what he calls the Event, but one senses that he is looking more for diversion than for enlightenment. Whatever has caused humankind’s disappearance remains obscure to him:
I possess none of the wishful thinking of science, and none, to my credit, of science fiction either. I don’t fall back on genocide by death rays, or epidemics spread around Earth by tiny, evil Venusians, or clouds of nuclear fallout from distant H-bombs. I sensed right off that the Event cannot be gauged by the usual measures.
Typically, stories about the near-extinction of humanity dramatize the process of decay, with lessons on the fragility of civilization, and how easily a sense of community is shattered when people become desperate. Mary Shelley’s “The Last Man,” published in 1826, one of the earliest modern apocalyptic novels, chronicles humanity’s failure to face up to a global plague, resulting in a kind of Hobbesian conflict survived only by the title character. That narrative trajectory now feels familiar. But Morselli forgoes the drama of depopulation, reducing the genre’s basic premise to its essence and its aftermath. His protagonist is not someone who cherishes social relations but a loner who has long since social-distanced, and flirted with self-annihilation. Given the narrator’s—and Morselli’s—views on contemporary society and its endless efforts to eliminate all kinds of earthly friction, one may even read this end of the world as a kind of collective wish fulfillment. One of the questions Morselli seems to have had on his mind is: How alive was everyone in the first place?
With nothing to do but walk around and observe, the narrator finds himself surprisingly impressed by some of the things people have left behind, or at least by their stubborn persistence in the absence of humans. A self-defined “Anthropophobe,” he begins to feel an unexpected sympathy for his fellow-man. “I waited for it to arrive and strike me,” he says of whatever has disappeared everyone else:
Finish me off, seeing that my turn was coming soon. I was condemned; beyond my walls, everything was submerged in a death fluid and I was immersed in it, a diving bell at the bottom of the sea. By osmosis, that fluid would creep through the walls. My anxiety was conscious and focused, not frenetic, and I was present to myself.
But this burst of attentiveness eventually gives way to sluggishness and despondency. The narrator lets himself go, shaving less often, leaving the kitchen sink clogged and the bedsheets unchanged. He develops a sweet tooth, feasting on chocolates and pastries. He abandons a journal that he has barely started.
A sudden, invisible phenomenon that has emptied the streets of cities and villages, without fanfare or farewells, leaving our protagonist in a state of existential limbo: the echoes one finds in “Dissipatio H.G.” of life during the coronavirus pandemic are, at times, so glaring that some passages read like thinly fictionalized versions of the present. Apocalyptic fiction is often disinterred amid catastrophes, either for their prescience or because they are paradoxically reassuring. Each phase of the quarantine seems represented in this slim novel, from the short-lived pleasure at nature’s reclaiming of old ground to the vague impulse to take notes and the growing pointlessness of grooming. Morselli is drawn to anticlimaxes, resisting drama at every turn, and it is this instinct that makes his final book so resonant with certain experiences of the past year. The tone of its post-apocalyptic world is not unceasing despair but melancholic inconsistency. Desire is transient; states of mind are fleeting and untrustworthy. “What for anyone else would be an ocean of negativity, an utter horror, is something I’m able to float on in a paper boat,” the narrator reflects. “A boat made of a few, mediocre, at times ironic, general ideas.”
“There’s a lot of people hoping to take a swing at that ball once it drops.” Cartoon by Emily Flake Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
In matching a world-weary protagonist to a depopulated planet, Morselli seems less interested in dissecting social shocks than in probing the porous border between blissful solitude and extreme loneliness. As the novel progresses, the narrator’s account of his environment becomes increasingly unhinged. The world, which at first looked “like an apartment whose owners are on vacation,” becomes a “tomb, wide open and empty.” The narrator briefly hallucinates the voice of a long-dead psychiatrist named Karpinsky, who once treated him for a nervous condition. He goes in search of this man, clinging to what is perhaps the one affectionate memory he has of another human being. At times, his fear is all-encompassing, “a gelid black substance in which I’m miserably, foolishly stuck, like a fly frozen in ice. ‘Where can I go?’ I wonder, ‘Where can I hide?’ And I understand that I cannot go anywhere, the fear is all around, and identical.”
Randall, who died in May, in Rome, shortly after finishing her translation, manages to get across, in English, the bleakness of Morselli’s restraint. At one point, the narrator returns to his retreat and, upon entering his storeroom, finds a cow munching on copies of one of his books. The sight of his words being digested fills him with tenderness. “I’d get them back tomorrow, supposing I succeeded in milking her, my ideas finally remunerative,” he thinks. The ironic tone is characteristic of Morselli’s books, but there is a nervous edge to the joke. Only someone well versed in loneliness—artistic, physical, emotional—could produce such a ruthlessly realistic account of an isolating catastrophe, tending to its false starts and its interruptions, its strange mixture of anxiety and tedium. In the end, that experience had a price. ♦