newyorker--2020-03-16--“Out There,” by Kate Folk

“Out There,” by Kate Folk

I was putting myself out there .
On my return to San Francisco from a bleak Thanksgiving with my surviving relatives in Illinois , I downloaded Tinder , Bumble , and a few other apps I ’ d seen Instagram ads for .
I resolved to pass judgment on several hundred men per day , and to make an effort to message the few I matched with .
I ’ d never liked the idea of finding a romantic partner on an app , the way you ’ d order pizza or an Uber .
To further complicate matters , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of men on dating apps in the city were now blots .
But what choice did I have ?
Apps seemed to be the way everyone found each other these days .
After my last breakup , I spent a while “ letting something happen , ” which meant doing nothing .
Years passed and nothing did happen , and I realized that without my intervention , my hand pushing the warm back of fate , it was possible nothing ever would .
In the end , it seemed to come down to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of being blotted .
Though I supposed there had always been risks .
The early blots had been easy to identify .
They were too handsome , for one thing .
Their skin was smooth and glowing , and they were uniformly tall and lean .
Jawlines you could cut bread with .
They looked like models , and they had no sense of humor .
I met one of them several years ago .
My friend Peter had invited me to a dinner party hosted by a tech founder he ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and with whom he ’ d once followed the band Phish around the country , selling nitrous poppers to concertgoers .
Peter and I didn ’ t really hang out , beyond the meetings we attended in church basements for people who no longer drank .
But I was bored , and it was a free dinner , and Peter made it sound as if he ’ d already asked a bunch of people who ’ d said no , which took some of the pressure off .
At dinner , I sat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He had the telltale blot look—high forehead , lush hair , shapely eyebrows—but I didn ’ t recognize it for what it was , because the blot phenomenon hadn ’ t yet broken through in the media .
He was solicitous , asking about my family , my work as a teacher , and my resentment toward the tech industry .
Roger seemed eager to charm , but I was not charmed .
I felt spotlighted by his attentiveness , his anticipation of what I might want—another helping of fava-bean salad , more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dropped a chunk of braised pork on the lap of my skirt .
I would say something self-deprecating , and he ’ d regard me steadily and assure me that I was a wonderful person , deserving of all I wanted from life , which wasn ’ t what I ’ d been asking for .
Roger didn ’ t know me and was not a credible judge of my worth—unless his position was that everyone had worth , which made him no judge whatsoever .
When I shifted the subject to him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pre-written .
“ I came from ranchland in the northern United States , ” he told me .
“ My father was stern but loving , in his way .
My mother is a wonderful woman who raised the four of us into strong , capable adults .
My childhood was not without hardship , but these adversities shaped me into the person I am today .
Now I live in the San Francisco Bay Area , land of innovation and possibility .
I am grateful for the life I ’ ve been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thanks to the people who have loved and supported me on the journey.
” As I drove Peter back to the Richmond in my decrepit Corolla , he revealed that his friend , the event ’ s host , had sprinkled the dinner party with blots .
“ It ’ s an acronym for something , ” Peter explained .
“ They ’ re biomorphic humanoids .
The latest advancement in the field of tactile illusion.
” He paused .
“ Fake people , ” he added .
I concealed my shock , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ So you invited me to be the subject of a Turing test for some company ’ s new product , without compensation , ” I said .
“ Well , he was boring , ” I said .
“ And too handsome .
I hate guys like that.
” Peter said he hoped I ’ d written all this on the comment card that had been distributed with the gelato , which asked me to rate my dinner companions ’ various attributes .
I ’ d given Roger all fives , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was glad not to have aided the blot revolution with my honest feedback .
The blots were designed to perform caretaking jobs that necessitated a high level of empathy .
They were meant to work in hospice and elder-care centers , tending to people who were suffering and who would soon die .
Such jobs were typically low-paying , and it would be better , more ethical , so the thinking went , to place blots in those roles .
They would do a fine job , and then after a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corporeal presence dissipating into a cloud of vapor .
But , aside from a few élite facilities , hospitals didn ’ t invest in the blot program , as it was prohibitively expensive and unpopular among donors .
The families who could afford topflight medical care didn ’ t like the idea of their loved ones being cared for by blots , even when it was shown that blots performed this labor more effectively than humans .
Soon blot technology was appropriated by a Russian company , and blots were employed in illegal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began using dating apps to target vulnerable women .
It had happened to my friend Alicia last summer .
“ Friend ” is a term I use loosely .
Alicia was someone I knew from the recovery community .
A group of us sometimes went out for food after a meeting , and it was on such an occasion , six months ago , that Alicia told us about her experience with a blot named Steve .
I already suspected Alicia had been blotted , because her Facebook profile had engaged me in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I have always admired your shoes , she messaged me , late one night , and I thought at first that she ’ d relapsed and was taking the opportunity to insult me .
Five of us were out at a diner on Geary , a place we liked even though the food was overpriced and bad .
Alicia ordered a chocolate milkshake—like a child , I thought—and recounted the ordeal .
Steve had proposed that they go on a weekend trip to Big Sur , after just a few weeks of dating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ red flag Alicia should have recognized .
Blots always wanted to go to Big Sur , where cell service was spotty , to give themselves some lead time with the victim ’ s data .
They ’ d lavish a woman with praise , heavy food , and good sex , and then in the middle of the night they ’ d steal the data stored in her phone , copy her credit-card info , and disappear with a voluptuous “ bloop ” sound , like a raindrop hitting the bottom of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vapor all that remained .

“When we first started dating, I was worried you might be one,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” Sam said.
“I was on the lookout for clues,” I said.
Sam shrugged. “Well, sorry to disappoint you,” he said, giving my left thigh a playful squeeze under the water.
The conversation lapsed again. I was annoyed that Sam wouldn’t join me in speculation about the mismatched couple, who had retreated into the locker room. On the drive up, we’d had music as a buffer, allowing us to pass long stretches without speaking. As we settled in for a last pre-dinner soak in the hottest pool, I waited to see what he would talk about in the absence of external cues. He began complaining that the resort forbade cooking meat on the property; he was worried about getting enough protein to maintain the muscle mass he’d painstakingly built at the gym. I asked him what he ate during the week, when we were apart, and he said mostly skinless chicken with mixed greens, and vanilla-flavored Muscle Milk.
“Wow,” I said. “You’re a protein fiend.”
Sam gave me a cross look. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said.
“No?”
“You make it sound stupid.”
“That wasn’t how I meant it,” I said, though I realized it was. I was nervous, eager to lighten the mood. I began telling a story about an ex, a younger guy who played bass in a Tool cover band called Stool. I’d met him at a meeting. Before he got sober, he’d spent a year eating only sardines in mustard sauce, which he bought tins of at Safeway on his liquor runs. In his first six months sober, he’d eaten only ice cream, a gallon a day.
“When we dated, though, he was back to a pretty regular diet,” I said. “Well, regular enough. He still ate a lot of ice cream.”
Sam’s mouth was a pink dash set within a tumult of beard growth. “Gross,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “He thought so, too.”
“I’d rather not hear about other guys you’ve dated,” Sam said.
This caught me off guard. “Why not?”
“Especially if they’re weird dudes who eat only sardines.”
“That was just one thing about him,” I said. “He had a lot of good qualities, too.”
“I don’t think it’s wise to talk about previous partners,” Sam said. “You’ve done that before, and it was a turnoff then, too.”
I watched myself descend into a familiar, sulky silence. Sam tried to cajole me on our walk to the showers. I sensed his desperation when he pointed out a set of ceramic goose planters near the lukewarm pool. “Cute,” I agreed, absently.
We rinsed the minerals from our skin and dressed in the locker room. As we walked down the gravel drive toward the main lodge, the kitchen in which we’d stashed our meatless groceries, Sam took my hand.
“Are you O.K.?” he said.
“I’m fine,” I said stiffly.
“Hey,” Sam said. He stopped and turned to face me. “I’m sorry, O.K.?”
“That’s a great question! In fact, it’s a wonderful, probing, sensitive question that’s making me reassess all my life’s work.” Cartoon by Edward Koren Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
“It’s fine,” I said, meeting his gaze. “I won’t talk about my exes again.”
“No, don’t say that. I want you to talk about whatever you want.”
He was smiling, hopefully. I could see that he really was sorry, though I suspected he didn’t know why he should be.
We went inside and made wraps with vegetables and tempeh, stir-fried in a cast-iron skillet. We ate in a section of the lodge that resembled a train car, with tables pushed against windows that overlooked a lush, forested ravine. Though Sam had apologized, I still felt distant from him, as if something had been left unresolved.
“I’d like you to talk about whatever you want, too,” I said.
Sam’s jaw clenched in response. He must have thought he’d escaped this topic. “O.K.,” he said. “Pretty sure that’s what I’ve been doing.”
“I mean, I’d like to hear more about your past,” I said. “Your exes, for instance.”
Sam laughed. “Why does this feel like therapy all of a sudden?”
“Have you ever done therapy?” I said, perking up at the reference.
Sam’s face reddened. “A few times, with my ex. Couples counselling.”
“Was it helpful?”
“I dunno,” Sam said, unfolding his wrap and picking out chunks of tempeh. “I’m not good at talking about feelings. It’s just the way I was raised, I guess.”
I reminded myself of the importance of accepting a partner exactly as he was in this moment, as I’d advised my friends to do when they came to me with complaints about their relationships. But our first minor conflict had broken a dam of judgment within me. As the second day proceeded, I picked up on additional things Sam did that annoyed me. At one point, we had the sauna to ourselves, and I’d begun telling a story about a friend from college who was having problems in her marriage when Sam emitted a false, barking laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I said, startled.
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s a thing my brother and I do sometimes.”
“Are you not interested in what I have to say?”
The mismatched couple entered the sauna. The woman draped a towel on the bench below us and lay across it, tits up, while the blot-looking man sat in one of the Adirondack chairs, legs spread wide. He briefly met my gaze, his full lips curling into a smile.
“It’s not like that,” Sam said quietly, patting my thigh. “It’s just a joke.”
Later, as we sat in one of the warmer pools, I told Sam about my work at the art school, the long hours of idleness, my feelings of shame and worthlessness as I continued collecting a paycheck for simply existing in a room.
“So you’re getting paid to do nothing?” he said. “Sounds pretty great.”
I found that I couldn’t properly convey the absurdity of my role. I probably just sounded spoiled. I switched tack, telling him about the meetings I went to, the recovery program I worked. Sam had been supportive, early on, of my sobriety, saying it was good that “you figured your shit out.” But, as I talked about the beauty of how meetings brought together all types of people, I realized I must sound brainwashed, as if I belonged to a New Age cult.
I turned and saw that his eyes were closed, his head tilted back against the edge of the pool. He appeared to be meditating, or maybe he’d fallen asleep.
By the third night, I longed to be back in my apartment, with the cats. At dinner, I nodded through Sam’s commentary on the lodge’s décor, having given up on planting seeds for a conversation of genuine depth. We had eaten most of the food we’d brought, and were down to wheat tortillas and trail mix. On the other side of the dining room, the average woman and her hot boyfriend sat drinking red wine and eating an elaborate vegetable stir-fry. I was annoyed that the man had continued existing. I’d been certain that he was a blot, and that one night he’d dissipate into vapor. I imagined we’d see her alone in the pools, making the most of her remaining vacation before heading back to a life rendered chaotic by the blot’s aggressions. But here they were, wearing plush robes and speaking animatedly in hushed voices. At one point, the woman laughed at something the man had said, then glanced at us guiltily, as if embarrassed to have disrupted the serenity of the lodge.
When we returned to our room, I initiated sex, hoping to work some angle of Sam into myself in a way that would yield pleasure. We moved our bodies quietly, not wanting to disturb the other guests. When it was over we lay in the dark, my head resting on Sam’s chest. I had not worn makeup since the day we arrived. My hair was tangled, still damp, smelling of the tea-tree shampoo provided in the communal shower. I had been naked and wet for most of the past three days. I hadn’t looked at a screen since we got here, our phones powered down and locked in my trunk. I’d had every opportunity to be fully present with Sam, but the absence of distraction had revealed only our disconnection. I felt as though my true self were locked in a vault back in the city. I imagined that Sam possessed a similar vault, but I was still unable to picture what it might contain.
“It’s so nice here,” I whispered. Sam didn’t know it, but this was my final attempt. I was giving him one last chance to reveal some soft part of himself he’d kept hidden.
But he only murmured, “Mm-hmm.” Minutes passed, and I felt his muscles tense and then slacken beneath my arm. The old loneliness washed through me. I thought back to the dinner party where I’d met Roger, the blot. How he had asked me questions with real interest. How he had noticed when my glass was empty, and taken it upon himself to refill it.
In the morning, we drove back to the city. I told Sam I’d drop him off near the Civic Center BART station. I pulled over on McAllister and put my flashers on. Sam unbuckled his seat belt, placed his hand on my knee, and gazed into my eyes. Once again, I felt that he was imitating something from a movie. His gestures of affection now seemed parodic, like the false laugh he’d interrupted me with, a joke he shared with his brother, in absentia, at my expense. “Great weekend,” he said, and I nodded.
“It really was,” I said. Sam cupped the side of my face in his hand—his signature move, I thought bitterly—and planted a long kiss on my mouth. I was relieved when he finally got out of the car. I watched him stand at the corner of McAllister and Polk, waiting for the light to change. From this distance, he could have been anyone, his existence a neutral fact, untethered from mine. It occurred to me that Sam might be a blot after all, a new kind that aimed at a longer-term deception by keeping his host at arm’s length. It occurred to me that it didn’t really matter either way.
Back home, the cats journeyed to the door to greet me, less swiftly than they had in their youth. I opened a can of wet food, sliced the pâté down the middle with the tip of a butter knife, and distributed half on each of two hexagonal black plates set on the floor. I’d had a neighbor come by and feed them while I was away, but he hadn’t scooped out the litter boxes, and I cleared them now of the clumps that had gathered. I saw my apartment with fresh eyes, in the harsh light of a day I had not begun here. It was quiet, and in the stillness I could hear time moving forward.
I had spent three months with Sam—not long, but enough that the prospect of starting over seemed exhausting. I imagined breaking up with him, razing what we had just started to build. I would do the same things with a different man, all the milestones, yet again, with someone new. I would peel myself open and unpack my past for his perusal. We would make juice together. I would clean each piece of the juicer carefully, dry it with a dish towel, replace it in the drawer. There would be a period of mutual excitement at the beginning, and then he would tire of me, or I of him. It would last however long it lasted, and then it would end.
From my bag, my phone dinged. Sam had already texted, which surprised me. Great weekend, he’d written, in lazy repetition of the sentiment he’d expressed in the car. He punctuated his message with a heart emoji, the first such icon he’d ever sent. I knew he considered this significant and assumed I would, too, akin to a profession of love.
I lowered myself onto the love seat. I didn’t reply to Sam’s text immediately, but I already had an idea of what I would write, and that I might come to regret it.
A week ago, I was walking through Golden Gate Park on my way to the Haight, to have dinner with my friend from college, who was now going through a divorce. I passed a clearing where five identical men sat at a picnic table. It was a strange sight, one that made me pause. On further inspection, they were not identical; their features were slightly different, though they all possessed the same height and build, and held themselves with the same prim, upright posture. They spoke calmly while playing a card game. I was struck by how comfortable they seemed with one another, as if they’d been acquainted long enough that they did not have to say much in order to be understood.
Then one of them spotted me. His golden-brown eyes lit up, his energies activated and channelled in my direction. “Hey!” he said, extricating himself from the picnic table and jogging toward me. “You look like a fascinating, intelligent woman, a person with much to offer. Do you want to go on a date? Have you ever witnessed the beauty of Big Sur in the summertime?”
The others turned, eyes flaring, long, perfect hands laying cards on the table.
I moved toward the space they had cleared for me. ♦


newyorker--2020-03-16--“Beach Glass,” by Robert Pinsky

“Beach Glass,” by Robert Pinsky

Who knew this too could become endangered or extinct ?
They gave me a little pail so I collected beach @ @ @ @ @ knew the sound in a seashell wasn ’ t your own blood— No more than @ @ @ @ @ the shell ’ s chambers breathing , A voice of air : Not churning breakers @ @ @ @ @ your ear .
In the sun ’ s furnace glare , the cloudy smooth gemstones @ @ @ @ @ Like shells , progeny of the beach .
Back then , who knew talcum powder @ @ @ @ @ from Phillips ’ Milk of Magnesia .
Emerald from Coke .
Wildroot Cream-Oil , Desert @ @ @ @ @ their pale glitter .
I had a friend once who loved Buying the water that @ @ @ @ @ Nature Mastered by invention .
Who knew those very bottles could Strangle the ocean ?
@ @ @ @ @ sick ?
Prone on the sand , I studied an inch from my eye the @ @ @ @ @ me were seeds of molten glass .

Who knew this too could become endangered or extinct?
They gave me a little pail so I collected beach glass and shells.
Who knew the sound in a seashell wasn’t your own blood—
No more than the ocean? It was the shell’s chambers breathing,
A voice of air: Not churning breakers, nor a pulse in your ear.
In the sun’s furnace glare, the cloudy smooth gemstones
Couched an interior fire. Like shells, progeny of the beach.
Back then, who knew talcum powder could ignite cancer?
Cobalt from Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia. Emerald from Coke.
Wildroot Cream-Oil, Desert Flower, Serutan—the years
Eroded their pale glitter. I had a friend once who loved
Buying the water that came in plastic bottles: Nature
Mastered by invention. Who knew those very bottles could
Strangle the ocean? Did their chemicals make him sick?
Prone on the sand, I studied an inch from my eye the jagged
Clear granules they told me were seeds of molten glass.


newyorker--2020-03-16--The Fall of Evo Morales

The Fall of Evo Morales

Outside a sports stadium in Cochabamba , Bolivia , three men stood on a plinth , tearing down a statue of Evo Morales , who until a few weeks before had been the country ’ s President .
One man diligently whacked away with a sledgehammer , while another shoved at the statue ’ s head—crowned , like the man it portrays , with a mushroom-shaped mullet that is distinctive among world leaders .
Finally , the statue came loose , and with a contemptuous heave the men threw it to the ground .
The sports minister of the new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demolition , told reporters afterward that stadiums shouldn ’ t be named for delinquents .
Morales had fled Bolivia in November , after he was accused of trying to steal an election , and the country ’ s military chief publicly suggested that he resign .
Since then , Bolivia had been fiercely , sometimes violently divided .
Many people spoke of a coup , but there was enduring disagreement over whether it had been perpetrated by Morales or by his opponents .
Whoever was to blame , his departure brought an abrupt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s most remarkable Presidencies .
The son of impoverished llama herders , Morales was an ethnic Aymara , the first indigenous President in a majority-indigenous country .
Although he left school before college and speaks in rough , heavily accented Spanish , he managed to hold power for almost fourteen years .
He was a protégé of Fidel Castro , and perhaps the last surviving exponent of the Pink Tide—the leftist leaders who dominated Latin America ’ s politics for more than a decade .
During his time in office , he transformed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and tripling the G.D.P .
Evo , as everyone calls him , is a sturdy , youthful-looking man of sixty , who prides himself on outlasting opponents in soccer matches in Bolivia ’ s Andean high altitudes .
( During one game , in 2010 , he was captured on video deliberately kneeing a distracted opponent in the groin . )
As recently as last year , he claimed to stay fit by doing more than a thousand sit-ups a day .
In the Presidency , he was tireless , beginning his workday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the evening .
A charismatic populist , he could also be arrogant and divisive , given to crass and at times eccentric proclamations .
On one occasion , he suggested that eating genetically modified chicken made people gay .
On another , he had the Congress building equipped with a “ Clock of the South , ” with hands that spun to the left , to symbolize Bolivia ’ s efforts to “ decolonize ” itself .
A longtime leader of the coca growers ’ union , Morales used his office to expound @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind the Presidential desk , he hung a portrait of Che Guevara , made out of coca leaves .
After Morales ’ s contested election , several of his highest-ranking officials resigned along with him , including the three people after him in the line of Presidential succession .
The office was claimed by a member of the conservative opposition : Jeanine Áñez , a fifty-two-year-old former television presenter , who was then serving in the largely ceremonial post of second vice-president of the Senate .
Within two days , Áñez had been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President , donning the sash of office as generals looked on approvingly .
She alienated the indigenous population just as quickly , leading a scrum of followers to the Presidential palace , where she raised an outsized Bible and declared that she was “ returning the Bible to the palace.
” Áñez , a light-skinned blond woman , made things worse by naming an all-white cabinet .
Following an outcry , she added an indigenous minister , but by then Morales ’ s loyalists had branded her “ la mujer teñida ” ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , simply , “ the whore.
” In office , Áñez signed a decree prohibiting “ personality cults ” in Bolivia ’ s institutions , and made it clear that she intended to purge Morales ’ s legacy and his presence from public life .
A Presidential employee told me that Áñez had toured Morales ’ s former offices , accompanied by a man dressed in native robes and another carrying a Bible .
While she prayed before portraits of Bolivia ’ s national heroes , the robed man blew a horn , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The employee told me that when Áñez encountered the coca-leaf portrait of Che she grew visibly upset and ordered it removed .
Áñez and her allies argued that Morales had turned the country into a socialist autocracy , and that only by removing him could it heal .
Morales , from exile in Mexico , insisted that he had created modern Bolivia—that the nation effectively didn ’ t exist without him .
When I spoke to him this winter , in one of a series of conversations , Morales described Bolivia ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hundred and ninety-five years as an independent republic , it has seen no fewer than a hundred and ninety revolutions and coups ; Morales ’ s ouster was arguably the latest one .
“ They said my government was authoritarian because I was President for a long time , ” he told me .
“ They called me ‘ Dictator Evo Morales , ’ but now the Bolivian people can see what it ’ s like to live in a dictatorship , what it is to live with a coup d ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be allowed to come back and finish his term .
Failing that , he assured me , his bloc—the Movement Toward Socialism , or MAS—would resume control of Bolivia one way or another .
“ I will return , and we will be millions , ” he said .
He was paraphrasing the last words of one of his heroes , the eighteenth-century anti-colonial rebel Túpac Katari , just before he was pulled to pieces by four Spanish horses .
One afternoon , as I waited outside the Presidential palace to meet Áñez @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ostentatiously spat on the ground next to me .
He seemed , perhaps understandably , to have mistaken me for an American official , there to assist the new regime .
It was early December , three weeks after the collapse of Morales ’ s government , and Bolivia remained polarized .
In the wealthier neighborhoods of La Paz , the graffiti called Morales an assassin , a dictator , a narco ; in the poorer , more indigenous districts , slogans proclaimed “ Evo Sí ” and “ Áñez Fascista.
” Two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ message , “ Alert : They are killing us , ” which could have come from either camp .
The Palacio Quemado , or Burnt Palace , as it is known , earned its name in 1875 , when an angry mob torched it in an attempted coup .
Its replacement , a pink-and-white neocolonial structure , has survived intact , but in 1946 the reformist President Gualberto Villarroel was murdered there in another mob attack , his body hurled from a balcony and then hanged from a street lamp in the plaza @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , flanked by a plaque commemorating Villarroel ’ s death .
The plaza , a quiet place with shade trees and balloon venders , is named for Pedro Domingo Murillo , a Creole patriot who sparked Bolivia ’ s war of independence against Spain , in 1809 .
Soon afterward , he was captured by royalist troops and hanged .
As if to repudiate this ugly history , Morales built a skyscraper , called the Great House of the People , to serve as a headquarters for his “ democratic and cultural revolution.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ steel , the Great House rises twenty-nine stories above the old palace , and contains the Presidential offices and living quarters , along with several government ministries .
Morales ’ s political opponents criticized the construction , which cost some thirty-four million dollars , as an extravagant vanity project .
After he fled , the new communications minister led a press tour of his chambers , which she derided as “ worthy of an Arab sheikh.
” News photographs showed a spacious but rather sterile bedroom and a marble-lined bathroom with a Jacuzzi—a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ luxurious than a Sheraton Four Points .

Before working for Áñez, Justiniano was a prominent lawyer from the opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz. (Controversially, he led the defense for two members of the Wolfpack, a group of five young men who were accused of a gang rape.) I asked him about the accusations that, even if Morales had committed electoral fraud, the new administration had responded with what amounted to a military putsch. Justiniano laughed and said that the complaints reminded him of a passage from “Don Quixote”—apocryphal, it turns out—in which the knight-errant tells his sidekick, “Let the dogs bark, Sancho. It’s a sign that we’re advancing.”
In La Paz, politicians seemed ready for a grudging compromise, but in the indigenous country of the altiplano the mood remained defiant. Evo’s home village of Orinoca lies six hours by car from La Paz. Orinoca comprises only a few hundred people, but on its outskirts looms a massive concrete-and-glass building of sharply angled geometry: the Museum of the Cultural and Democratic Revolution, which Morales built, at a cost of seven million dollars, to present the country’s history from the indigenous point of view. On a dirt lane outside the museum, I met an ancient woman, who was tending a herd of llamas. She wore an Evo campaign T-shirt that read “The people say yes.” She had lived her whole life in Orinoca, she said, but she had been to La Paz a few times, to show support for Morales in rallies and demonstrations. When I asked how she felt about the political change that Áñez had brought to the country, she replied with a baseless but widespread insult: “That whore. I hear she used to sell her body for money.” She hoped Evo would be back in power soon. He had been good for the people of the altiplano.
Morales’s opponents accused him, not unfairly, of favoring the altiplano, but his efforts also helped redress a historic injustice. After the brutal Spanish conquest, indigenous Bolivians were subjected to a feudal labor system that remained in place until the nineteen-fifties, and were effectively denied the vote. Even after laws changed, racial attitudes remained deeply entrenched, and indigenous citizens lived mostly in poverty, without access to land titles, bank loans, university education, or government jobs.
Morales made such reforms his priority. But, as indigenous Bolivians prospered, the white population felt excluded. Albarracín suggested that Morales had overseen a clash of basic ideals: “Western values versus the indigenous cosmovision.”
El Alto is effectively the capital of indigenous Bolivia. A bare-bones sprawl on the brown plain that begins at the La Paz crater’s edge and extends to the horizon, the city is predominantly Aymara, and largely populated by migrants from poor rural areas. It reflects Bolivia’s indigenous highland culture, with many of the women dressed in bowler hats and the bright-colored, bunched-out skirts called polleras; there are open-air food markets, hard-drinking bars, and a rough red-light district.
Thirty-five years ago, El Alto was little more than a huddle of adobe dwellings and market stalls. After the boom of the Evo years, it has a million inhabitants, and an exuberant local architecture, with façades covered in colorful glass and rooflines that jut out at eccentric angles. One new apartment building that I walked past had a towering replica of the Statue of Liberty incorporated into its upper floors.
Alexis Argüello, a thirty-three-year-old bookseller, told me that for most of his life he was ashamed to tell people that he was from El Alto. Gradually, the shame had been replaced by something like pride. A few years ago, he launched a small publishing imprint to showcase local writers. “For all of Evo’s despotism and his government’s faults, he helped create a new middle class from among people with more copper-colored skin,” Argüello said. He had all but forgotten the indignities of life before, “such as the need to explain myself to police.” Under the new administration, though, policemen had again begun antagonizing young men from El Alto.
For Áñez, antagonizing the indigenous is a significant risk. Although increasing numbers of Bolivians identify as mestizo, the population remains heavily indigenous, and the community’s partisans are not easily intimidated. On El Alto’s streets, effigies dangle from nooses attached to street lights, with placards that warn potential criminals of “popular justice.” One sign said “Rats Who Are Caught Will Be Hanged and Burned.”
Bolivia has a long history of organized protest, notably by miners and by the cocaleros whom Morales once represented, who assert their influence with marches, blockades, and street battles with police. Demonstrating miners often throw dynamite sticks, and deaths and injuries are not uncommon. In 2016, Morales’s vice-minister of the interior went to a roadblock to negotiate with striking miners; they kidnapped him and tortured him to death.
In recent months, some of these same uncompromising partisans have come to Morales’s defense. When he accused Áñez of fomenting a coup, hundreds of Aymara militants wearing red ponchos swarmed down the mountainside into La Paz, chanting, “Civil war now!” After the massacre at the Senkata gas facility, pro-Evo mobs destroyed seven of El Alto’s eight police stations.
In Santa Cruz, a center of opposition to Morales, residents celebrated his resignation. One rival hailed “the end of the tyranny.” Photograph by Moises Saman / Magnum for The New Yorker
The city’s policemen regrouped in the surviving station, in a middle-class neighborhood on the southern edge of town, where a sign over the gate read “Against Evil, for the Good of All.” During my visit, hundreds of policemen from the burned-out districts were there, readying for patrols or taking shifts sleeping on the floor of an auditorium. A new police commander, Colonel Juan Carlos Alarcón, had been brought from the mining town of Oruro to impose order on the convulsed city. “It is with some pain that I take over here,” he told me. “The job now is to reconcile this fracture that has opened up between the society and the police.” I asked him about the neighborhood around Senkata, which by all accounts still seethed with anger toward the police force. Alarcón said he was organizing a potluck lunch, and he hoped that Senkata people would attend. He was also intending to hold a Catholic Mass, he said, “for those of us who believe in God.”
The town seemed unreceptive. One morning, a fund-raiser was held on El Alto’s scrappy outskirts for the families of the victims of the massacre. In a small plaza, just past the Senkata facility, a stage had been set up, with a backdrop that read “The coup is against the people.” An Andean band played charango and flute, and a group of university students from La Paz danced. The smell of burning palo santo filled the air, and venders sold “solidarity food”—empanadas and hot dogs—with the proceeds going to the victims’ families. A bulletin board next to the stage showed photographs of the dead, and placards read “This democracy censors, persecutes, and kills.”
A pale, bearded man stood onstage and explained that “oil companies backed by Yankee imperialism” had been behind the events in Senkata. He spoke about unrest in Mexico, strife in Palestine, and the protesters in Hong Kong, concluding, “It’s all the same struggle.” He was followed by a rapper, who delivered furiously charged lyrics that described the Palestinians and the people of El Alto as allies in the “battles of the world.” In the end, he said, “the true resistance is right here.”
When I saw Morales in Mexico, he told me that he had been up since three-thirty that morning, working the phones, strategizing with his supporters. From exile, he carefully monitored the developments back home, and adjusted his message as necessary to keep himself relevant. When MAS agreed to start negotiating with the Áñez government, he shook off the slight and announced that he would no longer seek to be President. After his deputies voted to accept his resignation, Morales took on a new role, as the Party’s campaign manager. If he could no longer be king, he would be the kingmaker.
In mid-December, Morales called in to a gathering in Cochabamba, where several thousand MAS loyalists had assembled to discuss the Party’s future. Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-largest city, sits in a fertile Andean valley southeast of La Paz—the gateway to the Chapare, the coca-growing region that is Morales’s political base.
The assembly was held at a stadium called La Coronilla. On the sidewalk, people hawked DVDs: “Learn the truth about the coup financed by the United States!” Inside, several thousand people filled the bleachers, waving wiphala flags and buying snacks from strolling venders. A folk musician sang anti-imperialist lyrics to warm up the crowd. Miners wearing orange plastic helmets strode around purposefully.
As horns called the crowd to attention, an announcer welcomed MAS delegations from around the country, to cheers in Spanish, Aymara, and Quechua. The national anthem played, and people stood, one hand over their heart and the other clenched in a fist. After a moment’s silence for fallen comrades, the leader of the Cochabamba MAS contingent spoke, ending with a shout of “Down with traitors!,” which the crowd echoed rowdily. When the announcer declared that Morales “will return soon,” there were chants of “Evo, Evo, Evo!” and “Evo, you are not alone!”


newyorker--2020-03-16--The Existential Inconvenience of Coronavirus

This might be the first installment of a rewrite of “ A Journal of the Plague Year , ” but it will be written in real time rather than with the benefit of the fifty-odd years of hindsight that Daniel Defoe was able to draw on .
If all goes well—or very badly—it might also be the last installment , because although we ’ re only at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak , I ’ m close to the end of my tether .
Physical effects lie in the future , but the psychic toll is already huge—and wide-ranging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I going to catch it ?
This can be answered with a slight rephrasing of Philip Larkin ’ s famous line from “ Aubade ” : most things may never happen ; this one probably will .
Strangely , that comes far down on the list of worries .
Dying , that most worrisome thing , occupies less head space than the most minute things .
Don ’ t sweat the small stuff , runs the advice—and it ’ s all small stuff .
Except the small stuff—so small it ’ s invisible—is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re getting in a right old tizz , so let ’ s calm down and itemize our concerns , concerns about the virus which are also symptoms occasioned by it .
At the moment , the main concern is inconvenience .
When trains or planes are delayed , the operators routinely “ apologize for any inconvenience , ” as though inconvenience were just a minor thing , as opposed to an “ existential threat , ” for example .
But inconvenience is only inconvenient when it happens to other people ; when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threatening .
For most of us , our actual experience of terrorism , even at its most threatening , is of radical or habitual inconvenience .
At present , this means asking ourselves if we will be able to go to X or Y and , if we go there , whether we will be able to get back .
I can actually answer that quite easily .
We ’ re not going .
We ’ re not going to Indian Wells for the tennis , because it ’ s been cancelled , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mexico , because we ’ ve cancelled , less owing to fears of catching the bug than to our desire to put an end to the are-we-or-aren ’ t-we ?
angst .
It was a huge weight off our minds when we jumped ship ( a plane , actually ) so that we could stay home and contemplate the implications of existential inconvenience .
The good news is that , for many of us , the virus might amount to nothing more inconvenient than the flu .
As someone who hasn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ five years , the flu , until recently , seemed a dreadful prospect , but I ’ d settle for it in a heartbeat now .
Book an appointment , put it in the diary , get it over with , and get over it !
That ’ s basically what happened last year .
After I turned sixty , my doctor suggested that I get the latest shingles vaccine .
As an Englishman living in America , I ’ m often suspicious whether a new medical product is a genuine breakthrough or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So I quizzed her about the side effects and the price .
Maybe a sore arm , she said , and my health insurance would cover the full cost .
“ Deal , ” I said .
“ Let ’ s do it !
” As advertised , my arm hurt a bit ( couldn ’ t move it ) .
I also went to bed feeling slightly under the weather .
The next morning , I woke with a headache , a fever , and muscle aches that lasted for three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ everyone I know who ’ s had this shot has reacted the same way .
And not only that—you also need a follow-up shot three months later , with similar results .
So I scheduled that for a quiet week and , right on cue , went down with this flu-ey thing again , for just two days this time .
It was both thoroughly unpleasant—though a lot less unpleasant than shingles—and really quite convenient .
A two-week helping of something like that at the time of my choosing now sounds very appealing—if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the flu .
I ’ ll be sixty-two in June , and I ’ m enjoying the perk of senior discounts while moving deeper into the risk demographic of those susceptible to more-than-flu .
None of which seemed , a week ago , to concern the students at the university where I teach , in Los Angeles .
They were blasé about the whole thing , understandably , since they ’ re young and , it seems , permanently afflicted by the colds , coughs , and sniffles to which I have developed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the cunning of age .
It required surprisingly little maneuvering to make sure that they were the ones opening doors so I could squeeze in or out behind them like a fare dodger at the gates on the London Tube .
Colleagues were less easily duped .
A friend who teaches Faulkner saw exactly what I was up to as I Englishly ushered him ahead ( “ Please , after you , Brian ” ) , but he stepped up and reached for the bug-smeared door anyway .
Naturally , he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had taken measures to insure that “ As I Lay Dying ” remained a literary rather than literal experience .
He was holding the door for me because he was also , in drug argot , holding .
Hand sanitizer , that is .
My wife and I hadn ’ t stocked up on it because we wanted to be good citizens .
Now we wish that we ’ d bought a couple of gallons , before panic buying emptied the shelves .
( A terrible sight : Is anything more un-American than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Plague ” ( itself hard to find because of a sudden surge in what the students insist on calling relatability ) , Albert Camus writes that in times of pestilence we learn that there is more in men to admire than to despise .
I want this to be true—to go back to Larkin again , I want our almost-instinct to be almost-true—but how does that square with people hoarding toilet paper and face masks in a city where , at the time of writing , there have been relatively few confirmed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one little bottle of hand sanitizer , which , in another potential contradiction of Camus ’ s claim , I ’ ve made clear that I deserve more than my wife because , frankly , I paid for it .
“ Strictly speaking , it ’ s not ours , ” I pointed out .
“ It ’ s mine.
” The soap in our apartment is still communal , though , so we ’ re always jostling at the sink , bleaching our hands like the Macbeths .
And what a minefield @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has become .
Wash your hands every time you come in the house , they say .
But , having got in and washed your hands , you then touch stuff you had with you in the viral swamp of the outdoors .
And although we turned on the tap with a knuckle-nudge , those same knuckles were used to touch the keypad on our way into the apartment complex .
Can flawed washing become a form of spreading ?
And how about the keys used to unlock our door ?
Should we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you become conscious of the tactile chain of potential infection , the ground rapidly gives way beneath your feet .
We ’ ve now got a routine , have established a sort of cordon sanitaire , but how are we going to keep this up ?
Maybe we started too soon , especially since my hands are already rashy from the unprecedented orgy of scrubbing , soaping , and sanitizing .
In spite of evidence of panic buying , it seemed that , in some ways , we were more freaked out by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Had they unconsciously absorbed the lunatic message of the nation ’ s leader , that the virus will one day magically go away ?
Or was it part of that uplifting Californian mind-set that says one must never have—let alone express—negative feelings about anything ?

This might be the first installment of a rewrite of “A Journal of the Plague Year,” but it will be written in real time rather than with the benefit of the fifty-odd years of hindsight that Daniel Defoe was able to draw on. If all goes well—or very badly—it might also be the last installment, because although we’re only at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, I’m close to the end of my tether. Physical effects lie in the future, but the psychic toll is already huge—and wide-ranging. At the top end: Am I going to catch it? This can be answered with a slight rephrasing of Philip Larkin’s famous line from “Aubade”: most things may never happen; this one probably will. Strangely, that comes far down on the list of worries. Dying, that most worrisome thing, occupies less head space than the most minute things. Don’t sweat the small stuff, runs the advice—and it’s all small stuff. Except the small stuff—so small it’s invisible—is the big stuff. See? We’re getting in a right old tizz, so let’s calm down and itemize our concerns, concerns about the virus which are also symptoms occasioned by it.
At the moment, the main concern is inconvenience. When trains or planes are delayed, the operators routinely “apologize for any inconvenience,” as though inconvenience were just a minor thing, as opposed to an “existential threat,” for example. But inconvenience is only inconvenient when it happens to other people; when it happens to you, it feels threatening. For most of us, our actual experience of terrorism, even at its most threatening, is of radical or habitual inconvenience. At present, this means asking ourselves if we will be able to go to X or Y and, if we go there, whether we will be able to get back. I can actually answer that quite easily. We’re not going. We’re not going to Indian Wells for the tennis, because it’s been cancelled, and we’re not going to Mexico, because we’ve cancelled, less owing to fears of catching the bug than to our desire to put an end to the are-we-or-aren’t-we? angst. It was a huge weight off our minds when we jumped ship (a plane, actually) so that we could stay home and contemplate the implications of existential inconvenience.
The good news is that, for many of us, the virus might amount to nothing more inconvenient than the flu. As someone who hasn’t caught even a cold in the past five years, the flu, until recently, seemed a dreadful prospect, but I’d settle for it in a heartbeat now. Book an appointment, put it in the diary, get it over with, and get over it! That’s basically what happened last year. After I turned sixty, my doctor suggested that I get the latest shingles vaccine. As an Englishman living in America, I’m often suspicious whether a new medical product is a genuine breakthrough or just the latest hustle from Big Pharma. So I quizzed her about the side effects and the price. Maybe a sore arm, she said, and my health insurance would cover the full cost. “Deal,” I said. “Let’s do it!” As advertised, my arm hurt a bit (couldn’t move it). I also went to bed feeling slightly under the weather. The next morning, I woke with a headache, a fever, and muscle aches that lasted for three days. It turns out that almost everyone I know who’s had this shot has reacted the same way. And not only that—you also need a follow-up shot three months later, with similar results. So I scheduled that for a quiet week and, right on cue, went down with this flu-ey thing again, for just two days this time. It was both thoroughly unpleasant—though a lot less unpleasant than shingles—and really quite convenient. A two-week helping of something like that at the time of my choosing now sounds very appealing—if it would content itself with being just the flu. I’ll be sixty-two in June, and I’m enjoying the perk of senior discounts while moving deeper into the risk demographic of those susceptible to more-than-flu.
None of which seemed, a week ago, to concern the students at the university where I teach, in Los Angeles. They were blasé about the whole thing, understandably, since they’re young and, it seems, permanently afflicted by the colds, coughs, and sniffles to which I have developed the immunity of age—which is not unrelated to the cunning of age. It required surprisingly little maneuvering to make sure that they were the ones opening doors so I could squeeze in or out behind them like a fare dodger at the gates on the London Tube. Colleagues were less easily duped. A friend who teaches Faulkner saw exactly what I was up to as I Englishly ushered him ahead (“Please, after you, Brian”), but he stepped up and reached for the bug-smeared door anyway. Naturally, he was up to something, too, and had taken measures to insure that “As I Lay Dying” remained a literary rather than literal experience. He was holding the door for me because he was also, in drug argot, holding. Hand sanitizer, that is. My wife and I hadn’t stocked up on it because we wanted to be good citizens. Now we wish that we’d bought a couple of gallons, before panic buying emptied the shelves. (A terrible sight: Is anything more un-American than an empty shelf?) In “The Plague” (itself hard to find because of a sudden surge in what the students insist on calling relatability), Albert Camus writes that in times of pestilence we learn that there is more in men to admire than to despise. I want this to be true—to go back to Larkin again, I want our almost-instinct to be almost-true—but how does that square with people hoarding toilet paper and face masks in a city where, at the time of writing, there have been relatively few confirmed cases?
We’ve got just one little bottle of hand sanitizer, which, in another potential contradiction of Camus’s claim, I’ve made clear that I deserve more than my wife because, frankly, I paid for it. “Strictly speaking, it’s not ours,” I pointed out. “It’s mine.” The soap in our apartment is still communal, though, so we’re always jostling at the sink, bleaching our hands like the Macbeths. And what a minefield of anxiety the simple act of washing has become. Wash your hands every time you come in the house, they say. But, having got in and washed your hands, you then touch stuff you had with you in the viral swamp of the outdoors. And although we turned on the tap with a knuckle-nudge, those same knuckles were used to touch the keypad on our way into the apartment complex. Can flawed washing become a form of spreading? And how about the keys used to unlock our door? Should we be washing them as well? Once you become conscious of the tactile chain of potential infection, the ground rapidly gives way beneath your feet. We’ve now got a routine, have established a sort of cordon sanitaire, but how are we going to keep this up? Maybe we started too soon, especially since my hands are already rashy from the unprecedented orgy of scrubbing, soaping, and sanitizing. In spite of evidence of panic buying, it seemed that, in some ways, we were more freaked out by the bug than were other people here. Had they unconsciously absorbed the lunatic message of the nation’s leader, that the virus will one day magically go away? Or was it part of that uplifting Californian mind-set that says one must never have—let alone express—negative feelings about anything?
I said at the outset that this account would unfold in real time, and, sure enough, the situation is constantly changing, and always for the worse. Certainly, the mood on campus shifted dramatically this week. Most doors have been propped open so that no one has to touch them. Until at least April 14th, all teaching will be done online using something called Zoom—yet another source of anxiety for older and technologically vulnerable faculty members such as myself. Who knows when we will return physically to classrooms? On the plus side, L.A., generally, is a far healthier city than New York or London. It’s more spread out, and the worst thing about it—the relative lack of public transportation––might turn out to be one of the best things about it. On the minus side, I ride the Expo Line train all the time—another reason why I need the bottle of hand sanitizer more than my wife does. Besides, as a writer, I am uniquely at risk. Although it’s a wretched life in some ways, I’ve always been heartened by the all-redeeming advantage of spending one’s days writing at home: the freedom to pick one’s nose whenever the urge takes hold—which is pretty much all the time. That’s got to stop. But the writer’s finger is vocationally programmed to go up the writer’s nose. Even now, as I press these keys, a dangerous counter-gravity is urging hand toward face, nose, nostril. Keep typing, keep pounding the keys (which I’m touching now, seconds after sending a text to my tennis partner, on the very same phone that I checked while out having breakfast, before washing my hands when I got back).
Some changes are easier to make, though not necessarily more effective than others. My tennis partner and I have abandoned shaking hands at the end of a match—but, since I’ve touched the tennis balls that he has touched, what’s the point? Also, like many men of my generation, I have a fondness for paying with that filthy, contaminated stuff called cash. (Speaking of which, does anyone, even in London, a city of proud and determined caners, still snort coke through shared banknotes?) I’ve got to start paying with a card, but, weirdly, America seems less contactless than the U.K.; you’re always having to touch screens, trying quickly to choose the No Tip option while the barista is looking elsewhere. And why get anxious about screen touching when the cutlery has been touched, when you’re drinking out of cups that have been handed to you by the hands of others? Especially when my wife points out that I’m holding the cup not by the aptly named handle but with my fingers round the cup itself in some residual affectation of or longing for the French style of drinking coffee out of a bowl, as if we were back in those idyllic times before every day was spent as both victim and suspect in the ongoing forensic investigation into this hand-to-mouth crime scene called life.
No wonder we’re conflicted. I say two things to my wife all the time, one pitiful (“What will become of us?”) and the other Churchillian: “Be of good cheer.” It cheers one up, saying this, but while I’m saying it I am inwardly clutching my head like Munch’s screamer. There he is, stranded in the midst of a blazing pandemic, gripped by the existential realization that shops are out of face masks and sanitizer and—this is the killer—that, while screaming, he’s also touching his face. Aaargh! ♦
A Guide to the Coronavirus
How people cope and create new customs amid a pandemic.
What it means to contain and mitigate the coronavirus outbreak.
How much of the world is likely to be quarantined?
Donald Trump in the time of coronavirus.
The coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a year before a vaccine could be widely available.
We are all irrational panic shoppers.
The strange terror of watching the coronavirus take Rome.
How pandemics change history.


newyorker--2020-03-16--Christoph Niemann’s “Critical Mass”

Christoph Niemann’s “Critical Mass”

This week ’ s cover , by Christoph Niemann , takes on the spread of the novel coronavirus , evoking a world in which the health of an individual and the health of the public seem , increasingly , to be interdependent .
We recently talked to Niemann about the image , and about how his own life has been disrupted by the pandemic .
For more coverage of the coronavirus , read New Yorker writers on how much of the world is likely to be quarantined , Donald Trump in the time of coronavirus , how pandemics change history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the search for a vaccine .
Your first sketch was about the effect of the coronavirus on a global scale .
How did you get from the very large to the very small ?
I believe that the best concepts develop in the process of drawing .
I don ’ t usually have ideas pop in my head fully formed when I ’ m not at my desk .
Yet the genesis for this image , the idea of a sneezing domino standing on top of a globe packed with other domino @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was lying in bed , trying to fall asleep .
I tried to wake up my wife ( who ’ s my most reliable judge ) to ask her what she thought .
I got an unmistakable “ whatever.
” I got up again and sketched down the idea .
Only the next day , when I sat down to turn the concept into a proper art work , did I realize that the globe and the pieces actually resemble a virus .
In the end , it still proves my theory that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually draw them .
Unlike a chain reaction , the domino effect is a game-derived metaphor .
Was it your intention to play up the element of chance ?
As a kid , I spent a lot of time building pretty complex chain-reaction projects with wooden blocks .
I vividly remember the constant anxiety from knowing that one accidental move could destroy everything in a second .
The situation we ’ re facing is obviously much more dramatic , but that sense of fragility felt apt .
Your image points to both isolation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with your wife and three kids ; how has your actual daily life been affected by the pandemic ?
Until recently , life still felt normal , apart from the pasta and toilet-paper supplies at our supermarket being lower than usual .
But the mood keeps changing drastically .
No more jokes about touching your face or funny substitutes for handshakes .
It ’ s like getting punched in slow motion .
This is the moment just before the fist touches the chin .
I catch myself thinking about how the world will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be plenty of agony before we can even assess the damage .
For more covers by Niemann , see below :

This week’s cover, by Christoph Niemann, takes on the spread of the novel coronavirus, evoking a world in which the health of an individual and the health of the public seem, increasingly, to be interdependent. We recently talked to Niemann about the image, and about how his own life has been disrupted by the pandemic. For more coverage of the coronavirus, read New Yorker writers on how much of the world is likely to be quarantined, Donald Trump in the time of coronavirus, how pandemics change history, the spectacle of panic shopping, and the search for a vaccine.
Your first sketch was about the effect of the coronavirus on a global scale. How did you get from the very large to the very small?
I believe that the best concepts develop in the process of drawing. I don’t usually have ideas pop in my head fully formed when I’m not at my desk. Yet the genesis for this image, the idea of a sneezing domino standing on top of a globe packed with other domino pieces, came to me when I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. I tried to wake up my wife (who’s my most reliable judge) to ask her what she thought. I got an unmistakable “whatever.” I got up again and sketched down the idea. Only the next day, when I sat down to turn the concept into a proper art work, did I realize that the globe and the pieces actually resemble a virus. In the end, it still proves my theory that all decent ideas come together when you actually draw them.
Unlike a chain reaction, the domino effect is a game-derived metaphor. Was it your intention to play up the element of chance?
As a kid, I spent a lot of time building pretty complex chain-reaction projects with wooden blocks. I vividly remember the constant anxiety from knowing that one accidental move could destroy everything in a second. The situation we’re facing is obviously much more dramatic, but that sense of fragility felt apt.
Your image points to both isolation and interconnectedness. You live in Berlin with your wife and three kids; how has your actual daily life been affected by the pandemic?
Until recently, life still felt normal, apart from the pasta and toilet-paper supplies at our supermarket being lower than usual. But the mood keeps changing drastically. No more jokes about touching your face or funny substitutes for handshakes. It’s like getting punched in slow motion. This is the moment just before the fist touches the chin. I catch myself thinking about how the world will recover, but realize that there will be plenty of agony before we can even assess the damage.
For more covers by Niemann, see below:


newyorker--2020-03-16--At the Met, James Boyd Time-Travels with a Paintbrush

Ten days before the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed its doors to the public , owing to concern over Covid-19 , it celebrated an opening , or really a reopening , of its British Galleries , after a renovation that took more than a year .
The space consists of ten rooms , including three lavish interiors that were imported from England and reassembled here .
In the past , these had been easy to miss as you made your way from the wonders of medieval Europe to the armor and the American Wing .
Not long before the reopening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hanging around a broad stairway that had been transferred from Cassiobury , an estate in Hertfordshire .
He was preparing to add some varnish to a wainscot .
Throughout the renovation , he ’ d been working with the curators to bring eighteenth-century Britain to life ; which is to say , he ’ d been painting murals and trompe-l ’ oeils by himself—twelve to fourteen hours a day , seven days a week , for sixteen months .
“ I ’ m total toast , ” he said .
“ But it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What it was a sabbatical from was Boyd ’ s regular work , with his longtime partner , Anne Reath , of decorative interior painting—murals , wall finishes , wallpaper friezes , stencilling , fabric design , verre églomisé—for wealthy clients , about whom he won ’ t say much .
Billionaires , Russians , Greenwich , the Hamptons , cycles of boom and bust .
A lot of Boyd ’ s clients are big into gilding .
For one job , he ’ d conveyed , by bicycle , about fifty thousand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from a dealer downtown .
“ These clients are like the people who built these extraordinary rooms , ” Boyd said , gesturing toward the stairway .
This would make him more like the anonymous artisans who did all the extraordinary work .
He is not a representative of the ruling class .
Boyd , sixty-six , was reared in New Jersey but left “ as soon as possible ” to attend an experimental college ( now defunct ) in California .
For a time , he lived on a boat on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commune/squat called Darrahville .
He met Reath , and they found work in Los Angeles hand-painting upholstery fabrics .
“ We painted on everything , ” Boyd said .
“ Anne had painted her shoes .
One day , a woman saw her on Rodeo Drive .
‘ Where ’ d you get those shoes ?
’ So we made fourteen thousand pairs of hand-painted espadrilles .
We were clueless capitalists.
” They earned enough to move to Florence for a few years .
“ That ’ s when I first thought about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In 1985 , they settled in New York and studied with a master of classical painting named Michael Aviano .
“ He taught in the eighteenth-century style—structured palette , umber underpainting , ” Boyd said .
“ Here ’ s thousands of years of technique passed down .
Then we hit modernism and it ’ s all thrown away .
Pretty much any teacher who had technique has been dead for fifty years.
” They also became friendly with the interior designer Jed Johnson , Andy Warhol ’ s lover .
Johnson hired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We did whatever we were asked to do , ” Boyd said .
“ We learned more as we went along.
” For four decades , this has been their business .
“ Recently , it ’ s been a bit more of a struggle , ” he said .
“ For forever , wealth ’ s taste ran back to eighteenth-century France .
And now it has changed dramatically.
” On the Cassiobury staircase , Boyd had painted tromp-l ’ oeil wainscoting that mimicked the elaborately carved balustrade .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black-and-white photographs from Hertfordshire .
“ At first , Jim ’ s version was just too good , far too realistic , ” Wolf Burchard , a curator , said .
“ It was competing with the balustrade.
” For a nearby dining room taken from an estate in Oxfordshire , Boyd had painted three huge canvases—each seventeen feet by nine feet—depicting the Capability Brown-designed gardens as they would have looked in the eighteenth century ( in late afternoon , in late summer ) .
Boyd had mimicked the dusky shading that was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time .
( “ People went outside in tinted glasses , or with what they called a Claude glass , to make the landscapes appear as dark as they looked in Claude Lorrain ’ s paintings from the century before , ” he said . )
Each canvas was mounted behind a window , on a curving surface , to enhance the illusion that one was gazing outside .
In a third room , from a London estate , he ’ d painted murals of a view out of three large windows .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ eighteenth-century nightscapes by Abraham Pether .
“ Pether was the Thomas Kinkade of the time , ” Boyd said .
“ The curators were pleasantly surprised that I got into the scholarship so deeply.
” At the Met , he felt immersed in the exertions of his forebears .
“ There ’ s a monastic chant murmuring through the place , ” he said .
“ Like voices in the forest.
” And yet , as an anonymous practitioner of esoteric methods , he also has an unromantic view of art : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with physical labor.
” Walking out through the galleries , past teapots , gaudy majolica , and ceramic Wally Birds , Boyd said , “ The people who made all this stuff—these are my folks.
” ♦

James Boyd Illustration by João Fazenda
Ten days before the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed its doors to the public, owing to concern over Covid-19, it celebrated an opening, or really a reopening, of its British Galleries, after a renovation that took more than a year. The space consists of ten rooms, including three lavish interiors that were imported from England and reassembled here. In the past, these had been easy to miss as you made your way from the wonders of medieval Europe to the armor and the American Wing.
Not long before the reopening, an artist named James Boyd was hanging around a broad stairway that had been transferred from Cassiobury, an estate in Hertfordshire. He was preparing to add some varnish to a wainscot. Throughout the renovation, he’d been working with the curators to bring eighteenth-century Britain to life; which is to say, he’d been painting murals and trompe-l’oeils by himself—twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, for sixteen months. “I’m total toast,” he said. “But it was a real sabbatical for me.”
What it was a sabbatical from was Boyd’s regular work, with his longtime partner, Anne Reath, of decorative interior painting—murals, wall finishes, wallpaper friezes, stencilling, fabric design, verre églomisé—for wealthy clients, about whom he won’t say much. Billionaires, Russians, Greenwich, the Hamptons, cycles of boom and bust. A lot of Boyd’s clients are big into gilding. For one job, he’d conveyed, by bicycle, about fifty thousand dollars’ worth of gold leaf, from a dealer downtown.
“These clients are like the people who built these extraordinary rooms,” Boyd said, gesturing toward the stairway. This would make him more like the anonymous artisans who did all the extraordinary work. He is not a representative of the ruling class. Boyd, sixty-six, was reared in New Jersey but left “as soon as possible” to attend an experimental college (now defunct) in California. For a time, he lived on a boat on the Calaveras River, in an eccentric art commune/squat called Darrahville. He met Reath, and they found work in Los Angeles hand-painting upholstery fabrics. “We painted on everything,” Boyd said. “Anne had painted her shoes. One day, a woman saw her on Rodeo Drive. ‘Where’d you get those shoes?’ So we made fourteen thousand pairs of hand-painted espadrilles. We were clueless capitalists.”
They earned enough to move to Florence for a few years. “That’s when I first thought about traditional art,” he said. In 1985, they settled in New York and studied with a master of classical painting named Michael Aviano. “He taught in the eighteenth-century style—structured palette, umber underpainting,” Boyd said. “Here’s thousands of years of technique passed down. Then we hit modernism and it’s all thrown away. Pretty much any teacher who had technique has been dead for fifty years.” They also became friendly with the interior designer Jed Johnson, Andy Warhol’s lover. Johnson hired them to paint fabrics and wall surfaces. “We did whatever we were asked to do,” Boyd said. “We learned more as we went along.” For four decades, this has been their business. “Recently, it’s been a bit more of a struggle,” he said. “For forever, wealth’s taste ran back to eighteenth-century France. And now it has changed dramatically.”
On the Cassiobury staircase, Boyd had painted tromp-l’oeil wainscoting that mimicked the elaborately carved balustrade. He’d relied on a few old black-and-white photographs from Hertfordshire. “At first, Jim’s version was just too good, far too realistic,” Wolf Burchard, a curator, said. “It was competing with the balustrade.”
For a nearby dining room taken from an estate in Oxfordshire, Boyd had painted three huge canvases—each seventeen feet by nine feet—depicting the Capability Brown-designed gardens as they would have looked in the eighteenth century (in late afternoon, in late summer). Boyd had mimicked the dusky shading that was popular in the landscape painting of the time. (“People went outside in tinted glasses, or with what they called a Claude glass, to make the landscapes appear as dark as they looked in Claude Lorrain’s paintings from the century before,” he said.) Each canvas was mounted behind a window, on a curving surface, to enhance the illusion that one was gazing outside.
In a third room, from a London estate, he’d painted murals of a view out of three large windows. As a reference, Boyd had studied eighteenth-century nightscapes by Abraham Pether. “Pether was the Thomas Kinkade of the time,” Boyd said. “The curators were pleasantly surprised that I got into the scholarship so deeply.” At the Met, he felt immersed in the exertions of his forebears. “There’s a monastic chant murmuring through the place,” he said. “Like voices in the forest.” And yet, as an anonymous practitioner of esoteric methods, he also has an unromantic view of art: “It’s more like mathematics mixed with physical labor.” Walking out through the galleries, past teapots, gaudy majolica, and ceramic Wally Birds, Boyd said, “The people who made all this stuff—these are my folks.” ♦


newyorker--2020-03-16--A National Lampoon Reboot Takes On Cancel Culture

Is there anything more hopeful and cheery than a group of young musical-comedy types gathered for the first rehearsal of a new show ?
No , there isn ’ t .
But “ hopeful ” is also the word for investors trying to resurrect a once potent but now tarnished comedy brand , and these two forces collided recently in a downtown rehearsal space where a reboot of National Lampoon ’ s fabled 1973 musical revue , “ Lemmings , ” was getting on its feet , before a run at Joe ’ s Pub .
It is fair to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the nineteen-seventies—heady stuff for a magazine , even in print-friendlier days , although the movie “ National Lampoon ’ s Animal House ” helped , too .
It is also fair to say that the Lampoon has since bankrupted its credibility by having attached its name to a string of dumb , largely unseen sex comedies like “ National Lampoon ’ s Barely Legal ” and “ National Lampoon Presents Jake ’ s Booty Call.
” Whether there is twelve million dollars ’ worth of equity left in the brand—that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the name and assets—remains an open question .
One of those nearly fifty-year-old assets is “ Lemmings , ” remembered by comedy nerds for giving John Belushi , Chevy Chase , and Christopher Guest an early platform , two years before Belushi and Chase joined the first cast of “ Saturday Night Live.
” The revue , which ran for ten months at the Village Gate , was a druggy burlesque of the Woodstock festival , rebilled as Woodshuck : Three Days of Love , Peace , and Death , with cutting impersonations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Joni Mitchell , Bob Dylan , and Joe Cocker .
“ Very , very good and very , very funny , ” Edith Oliver wrote in these pages .
The evening ended with festival-goers committing mass suicide—a finale in tune with the Watergate era ’ s souring on hippie idealism , and with the Lampoon ’ s sense of itself as a fearless , smart-ass scourge .
But back to hopefulness : around a big table , the cast and creators of “ Lemmings : 21st Century ” gave a new script its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the “ Downfall festival ” —a stand-in for the likes of Coachella , Bonnaroo , Gov Ball , and the Fyre Festival .
There are digs at influencers , glamping , Goop , Instagram culture , cancel culture , one-per-centers , long lines , and expensive festival cuisine , like “ vegan hot dogs and vegan T-bones and vegan imitation crab / Plus real-fish sashimi that we grew in a lab.
” Among the performers parodied : Billie Eilish , Lizzo , Coldplay , Lil Nas X , Bob Dylan ( again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Venti , ” and “ Florence and the Appliance.
” ( Mercifully , a sketch involving “ Justin Creeper ” and “ Carbi D ” was cut . )
Updating the original ’ s gloomy finale for the climate-change era , the new show climaxes with a Category 5 hurricane .
Plus Beyoncé .
It was hard to tell how the new “ Lemmings ” might play .
Reached by phone , Chevy Chase was skeptical .
“ I think it ’ s odd and silly , ” he said .
“ ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time .
To steal the name—if I did a movie tomorrow called ‘ And the Holy Grail , ’ it might make people come , but it doesn ’ t fit the time.
” At the reading , though , more jokes had landed than not .
The writer , Andrew Farmer , and the songwriter , Henry Koperski , both in their thirties and with solid alternative-comedy credentials , asked the cast for notes .
Eric Lockley , who plays a washed-up rapper , said he didn ’ t get a line @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ninety-three-year-old teen detectives .
“ I had to look them up , ” he noted , and suggested subbing in Alex Mack or Shelby Woo , Nickelodeon sleuths from the nineties .
On the other end of the cultural-temporal spectrum , a debate broke out over a reference to VSCO girls ( a subspecies of teen that cropped up last year , characterized by a fondness for scrunchies ) .
During a break , Farmer explained the show ’ s comedic philosophy , which aligns with the National Lampoon ’ s newfound desire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wokeness .
( The brand has been sponsoring standup evenings with themes like “ Lesbian Agenda ” and “ Rape Jokes by Survivors.
” ) Farmer detailed how he and Koperski had revamped the show ’ s Ariana Grande number , which initially focussed on her dating habits .
They worried that it was slut-shamey and , worse , tired .
They also cut a bit poking fun at Kanye West .
“ Clearly , he ’ s going through something , ” Farmer said .
“ And punching someone when they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the best joke at the moment.
” That was not a scruple held by the mostly straight white male writers for the old Lampoon , much of whose work , where it involved women , minorities , and underage sex , has not aged well .
Farmer heralded the new Lampoon ’ s multiplicity of voices .
“ We ’ re both gay , ” he said of himself and Koperski , “ and I ’ m disabled.
” ( He has clubfeet and a condition known as windswept hands . )
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a comic institution like this and to be lampooning culture from a different perspective is a great way to change what people think about National Lampoon.
” That change will have to wait .
During the script discussion , an actor had ventured , “ This might be opening a can of worms , but should we be mentioning coronavirus ?
” The consensus was : wait and see .
“ Who knows ?
” Farmer said .
“ We may end up performing this thing under a plastic tent.
” The comment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was decided to postpone the show until August .
The real Coachella had already been pushed to October .
Maybe there was a new joke to be made about natural disasters , or cancel culture .
♦

Is there anything more hopeful and cheery than a group of young musical-comedy types gathered for the first rehearsal of a new show? No, there isn’t. But “hopeful” is also the word for investors trying to resurrect a once potent but now tarnished comedy brand, and these two forces collided recently in a downtown rehearsal space where a reboot of National Lampoon’s fabled 1973 musical revue, “Lemmings,” was getting on its feet, before a run at Joe’s Pub.
It is fair to say that the National Lampoon transformed comedy in the nineteen-seventies—heady stuff for a magazine, even in print-friendlier days, although the movie “National Lampoon’s Animal House” helped, too. It is also fair to say that the Lampoon has since bankrupted its credibility by having attached its name to a string of dumb, largely unseen sex comedies like “National Lampoon’s Barely Legal” and “National Lampoon Presents Jake’s Booty Call.” Whether there is twelve million dollars’ worth of equity left in the brand—that’s what PalmStar Media paid in 2017 for the name and assets—remains an open question.
One of those nearly fifty-year-old assets is “Lemmings,” remembered by comedy nerds for giving John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Christopher Guest an early platform, two years before Belushi and Chase joined the first cast of “Saturday Night Live.” The revue, which ran for ten months at the Village Gate, was a druggy burlesque of the Woodstock festival, rebilled as Woodshuck: Three Days of Love, Peace, and Death, with cutting impersonations of performers such as James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Joe Cocker. “Very, very good and very, very funny,” Edith Oliver wrote in these pages. The evening ended with festival-goers committing mass suicide—a finale in tune with the Watergate era’s souring on hippie idealism, and with the Lampoon’s sense of itself as a fearless, smart-ass scourge.
But back to hopefulness: around a big table, the cast and creators of “Lemmings: 21st Century” gave a new script its first read-through. The reboot takes place at the “Downfall festival”—a stand-in for the likes of Coachella, Bonnaroo, Gov Ball, and the Fyre Festival. There are digs at influencers, glamping, Goop, Instagram culture, cancel culture, one-per-centers, long lines, and expensive festival cuisine, like “vegan hot dogs and vegan T-bones and vegan imitation crab / Plus real-fish sashimi that we grew in a lab.” Among the performers parodied: Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Coldplay, Lil Nas X, Bob Dylan (again), Taylor Swift, “Ariana Venti,” and “Florence and the Appliance.” (Mercifully, a sketch involving “Justin Creeper” and “Carbi D” was cut.) Updating the original’s gloomy finale for the climate-change era, the new show climaxes with a Category 5 hurricane. Plus Beyoncé.
It was hard to tell how the new “Lemmings” might play. Reached by phone, Chevy Chase was skeptical. “I think it’s odd and silly,” he said. “ ‘Lemmings’ was so much for its time. To steal the name—if I did a movie tomorrow called ‘And the Holy Grail,’ it might make people come, but it doesn’t fit the time.”
At the reading, though, more jokes had landed than not. The writer, Andrew Farmer, and the songwriter, Henry Koperski, both in their thirties and with solid alternative-comedy credentials, asked the cast for notes. Eric Lockley, who plays a washed-up rapper, said he didn’t get a line about the Hardy Boys, those now ninety-three-year-old teen detectives. “I had to look them up,” he noted, and suggested subbing in Alex Mack or Shelby Woo, Nickelodeon sleuths from the nineties. On the other end of the cultural-temporal spectrum, a debate broke out over a reference to VSCO girls (a subspecies of teen that cropped up last year, characterized by a fondness for scrunchies).
During a break, Farmer explained the show’s comedic philosophy, which aligns with the National Lampoon’s newfound desire to find an intersection between outrageousness and wokeness. (The brand has been sponsoring standup evenings with themes like “Lesbian Agenda” and “Rape Jokes by Survivors.”) Farmer detailed how he and Koperski had revamped the show’s Ariana Grande number, which initially focussed on her dating habits. They worried that it was slut-shamey and, worse, tired. They also cut a bit poking fun at Kanye West. “Clearly, he’s going through something,” Farmer said. “And punching someone when they’re down doesn’t feel like the best joke at the moment.”
That was not a scruple held by the mostly straight white male writers for the old Lampoon, much of whose work, where it involved women, minorities, and underage sex, has not aged well. Farmer heralded the new Lampoon’s multiplicity of voices. “We’re both gay,” he said of himself and Koperski, “and I’m disabled.” (He has clubfeet and a condition known as windswept hands.) “Being handed the mike to work with a comic institution like this and to be lampooning culture from a different perspective is a great way to change what people think about National Lampoon.”
That change will have to wait. During the script discussion, an actor had ventured, “This might be opening a can of worms, but should we be mentioning coronavirus?” The consensus was: wait and see. “Who knows?” Farmer said. “We may end up performing this thing under a plastic tent.” The comment proved half prescient. Days later, it was decided to postpone the show until August. The real Coachella had already been pushed to October. Maybe there was a new joke to be made about natural disasters, or cancel culture. ♦


newyorker--2020-03-16--Kate Folk on Discerning Reality on the Internet

In “ Out There , ” your story in this week ’ s issue , a woman decides that it ’ s time to get into online dating .
But there ’ s a complication : it ’ s been estimated that many of the men on dating apps are “ blots , ” fake humans posing as eligible men in order to steal their targets ’ personal information .
What an excellent premise for a story .
One of the recurring motifs of the piece is how difficult it can be to identify blots , since they seem , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did this premise come to you , and what made it appealing to tackle in a fictional setting ?
I wrote my first blot story a few years ago , during one of my forays into online dating .
I know many people enjoy using dating apps , but at the time they felt to me like another alienating offshoot of the tech industry that dominates San Francisco , where I ’ ve lived since 2008 .
Somehow , the men I connected with through apps never seemed fully real , even after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And they felt more disposable , too , since I shared no social connections with them .
I could message with someone for a bit , then close the app and never think about them again .
The efficiency of the app reduced dating to merely another transaction .
It was exhausting and joyless , but I felt obligated to do it , because , if I didn ’ t , I wasn ’ t “ putting myself out there ” and would therefore never date again .
I ’ ve heard people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ succeed ” at online dating , in the sense of using it to find a long-term partner , you have to “ treat it like a job.
” That always sounded awful to me .
My work often explores the notion of the uncanny and how technology , especially in the form of mediated communication and artificial intelligence , can tap into our deepest societal and personal anxieties .
Along with dating apps , I ’ m fascinated by the uncanniness of , say , a spam e-mail , or a message @ @ @ @ @ @ @ account , or a tale of catfishing .
We live on the Internet , and yet we ’ re always braced to have our lives tampered with , possibly ruined by , the Internet .
We ’ ve all accepted risk as the price of admission , and this highlights how all human interaction is risky—and no interaction is more fraught with peril than romance .
A blot is basically a spam e-mail come to life .
In the story , the process that the narrator goes through—trying to figure out whether Sam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anyone undergoes in determining whether their new partner is cool or a creep whose monstrousness will slowly unfurl .
Online dating only heightens the stakes of the discovery process , as you ’ re dating a person who hasn ’ t been vetted by anyone in your real-life social network .
There is also a certain stigma to online dating—much less than there used to be , but I know a lot of people who still pride themselves on not using apps , as if resorting to them is a sign of limited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always been societal suspicion , and pity , aimed at straight women who are single despite no longer being in their twenties .
So I liked how , in this imagined world , the blots are imposing yet another layer of complication on the search for a partner .
In this world , people ’ s judgment of women using Tinder is justified , because by doing so they ’ re inviting the chaos of a blot into their lives .
The narrator seems to be in a period of renunciation in her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
She says that she ’ s not attracted to “ handsome guys.
” She lives alone .
What ’ s so appealing to her about this way of life ?
I ’ m not sure if this life style is appealing to her or if it ’ s just kind of how things have ended up .
I think she probably enjoys being alone more than she thinks she does and , to some extent , has made decisions that perpetuate solitude .
The appeal of this life style , I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which might be particularly attractive to someone who ’ s often felt out of control .
I see the narrator as someone who ’ s engaged in self-destructive habits in the past , and who has deliberately cut out influences that were harmful to her .
She ’ s sober , but relationships can also be used addictively , and now she ’ s trying to navigate dating in a “ healthy ” way , a practice that doesn ’ t come to her intuitively .
Maybe she ’ s had all-consuming , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clung to a partner as if he ’ s a raft on the open sea , and so now she ’ s trying to do things differently with Sam , and adhere to a rational dating style of the kind suggested by self-help books .
Unfortunately , sometimes a lack of obsession simply means you ’ re not that into someone .
I think , when a person is accustomed to dysfunctional dynamics , it can be difficult to tell the difference between healthy passion and codependent fixation on a love object .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , infatuated stage of love , these two strains are indistinguishable .
I also see this narrator as someone who ’ s had relationships that didn ’ t work out—ending dramatically or dragging out in a soul-depleting romantic purgatory—and she ’ s not quite convinced that throwing herself back into the dating pool is worth it .
She ’ s perhaps swung to the opposite extreme and is looking at dating too rationally , with the awareness that any relationship she begins will end eventually .
This leads her to wonder if there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , if the result will be disappointment , or worse .
The narrator meets a man named Sam and tries to figure out whether he ’ s a blot .
Ironically , when he ’ s inattentive or kind of a jerk , she ’ s encouraged , taking it as proof that he ’ s not engineered to appeal to her .
This seems perhaps analogous to situations in real-life romantic encounters ?
In the story , the spectre of the blots has nullified all other criteria for romantic partners .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then finding an authentically human man in that pool is a win in itself .
In her effort to determine , definitively , that Sam isn ’ t a blot , the narrator is distracted from the possibility that he might fail to measure up in other important ways .
I think this is analogous to how people can get so caught up in the “ project ” of finding a long-term partner that they ’ ll wind up ignoring all sorts of red flags .
They become so fixated on attaining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they forget to consider whether they even want to be with this particular person in the first place .
Also , the blots play into our fear of someone who seems “ too good to be true.
” In the early stages of dating , I think we are all comforted by a person ’ s obvious ( but tolerable ) flaws and idiosyncrasies , because the alternative is worse—someone seeming perfect but then turning out to be terrible in an unexpected way .
Being able to immediately spot a person ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For the narrator , Sam ’ s selfishness and mediocrity seem like an acceptable trade-off—until , of course , they aren ’ t .
After a desultory romantic weekend with Sam at a hot-springs resort , the narrator comes to see certain tendencies in him that are no less programmatic than those of blots .
In the end , she encounters a group of blots sitting at a table .
They clear a space for her , and she moves toward it .
Why does she make this decision ?

Photograph by Andria Lo
In “Out There,” your story in this week’s issue, a woman decides that it’s time to get into online dating. But there’s a complication: it’s been estimated that many of the men on dating apps are “blots,” fake humans posing as eligible men in order to steal their targets’ personal information. What an excellent premise for a story. One of the recurring motifs of the piece is how difficult it can be to identify blots, since they seem, basically, like perfect men. How did this premise come to you, and what made it appealing to tackle in a fictional setting?
I wrote my first blot story a few years ago, during one of my forays into online dating. I know many people enjoy using dating apps, but at the time they felt to me like another alienating offshoot of the tech industry that dominates San Francisco, where I’ve lived since 2008. Somehow, the men I connected with through apps never seemed fully real, even after we’d met in person. And they felt more disposable, too, since I shared no social connections with them. I could message with someone for a bit, then close the app and never think about them again. The efficiency of the app reduced dating to merely another transaction. It was exhausting and joyless, but I felt obligated to do it, because, if I didn’t, I wasn’t “putting myself out there” and would therefore never date again. I’ve heard people say that if you really want to “succeed” at online dating, in the sense of using it to find a long-term partner, you have to “treat it like a job.” That always sounded awful to me.
My work often explores the notion of the uncanny and how technology, especially in the form of mediated communication and artificial intelligence, can tap into our deepest societal and personal anxieties. Along with dating apps, I’m fascinated by the uncanniness of, say, a spam e-mail, or a message sent from a friend’s hacked account, or a tale of catfishing. We live on the Internet, and yet we’re always braced to have our lives tampered with, possibly ruined by, the Internet. We’ve all accepted risk as the price of admission, and this highlights how all human interaction is risky—and no interaction is more fraught with peril than romance.
A blot is basically a spam e-mail come to life. In the story, the process that the narrator goes through—trying to figure out whether Sam is a blot—is similar to the process anyone undergoes in determining whether their new partner is cool or a creep whose monstrousness will slowly unfurl. Online dating only heightens the stakes of the discovery process, as you’re dating a person who hasn’t been vetted by anyone in your real-life social network. There is also a certain stigma to online dating—much less than there used to be, but I know a lot of people who still pride themselves on not using apps, as if resorting to them is a sign of limited social capital. And there’s always been societal suspicion, and pity, aimed at straight women who are single despite no longer being in their twenties. So I liked how, in this imagined world, the blots are imposing yet another layer of complication on the search for a partner. In this world, people’s judgment of women using Tinder is justified, because by doing so they’re inviting the chaos of a blot into their lives.
The narrator seems to be in a period of renunciation in her life. She’s in recovery. She says that she’s not attracted to “handsome guys.” She lives alone. What’s so appealing to her about this way of life?
I’m not sure if this life style is appealing to her or if it’s just kind of how things have ended up. I think she probably enjoys being alone more than she thinks she does and, to some extent, has made decisions that perpetuate solitude. The appeal of this life style, I think, is a sense of control, which might be particularly attractive to someone who’s often felt out of control. I see the narrator as someone who’s engaged in self-destructive habits in the past, and who has deliberately cut out influences that were harmful to her. She’s sober, but relationships can also be used addictively, and now she’s trying to navigate dating in a “healthy” way, a practice that doesn’t come to her intuitively. Maybe she’s had all-consuming, obsessive relationships in which she’s clung to a partner as if he’s a raft on the open sea, and so now she’s trying to do things differently with Sam, and adhere to a rational dating style of the kind suggested by self-help books. Unfortunately, sometimes a lack of obsession simply means you’re not that into someone. I think, when a person is accustomed to dysfunctional dynamics, it can be difficult to tell the difference between healthy passion and codependent fixation on a love object. Maybe when people are in the early, infatuated stage of love, these two strains are indistinguishable.
I also see this narrator as someone who’s had relationships that didn’t work out—ending dramatically or dragging out in a soul-depleting romantic purgatory—and she’s not quite convinced that throwing herself back into the dating pool is worth it. She’s perhaps swung to the opposite extreme and is looking at dating too rationally, with the awareness that any relationship she begins will end eventually. This leads her to wonder if there’s any point in beginning again, if the result will be disappointment, or worse.
The narrator meets a man named Sam and tries to figure out whether he’s a blot. Ironically, when he’s inattentive or kind of a jerk, she’s encouraged, taking it as proof that he’s not engineered to appeal to her. This seems perhaps analogous to situations in real-life romantic encounters?
In the story, the spectre of the blots has nullified all other criteria for romantic partners. If dating apps are now riddled with blots, then finding an authentically human man in that pool is a win in itself. In her effort to determine, definitively, that Sam isn’t a blot, the narrator is distracted from the possibility that he might fail to measure up in other important ways. I think this is analogous to how people can get so caught up in the “project” of finding a long-term partner that they’ll wind up ignoring all sorts of red flags. They become so fixated on attaining an idealized relationship with “someone” that they forget to consider whether they even want to be with this particular person in the first place.
Also, the blots play into our fear of someone who seems “too good to be true.” In the early stages of dating, I think we are all comforted by a person’s obvious (but tolerable) flaws and idiosyncrasies, because the alternative is worse—someone seeming perfect but then turning out to be terrible in an unexpected way. Being able to immediately spot a person’s defects can relieve a certain pressure. For the narrator, Sam’s selfishness and mediocrity seem like an acceptable trade-off—until, of course, they aren’t.
After a desultory romantic weekend with Sam at a hot-springs resort, the narrator comes to see certain tendencies in him that are no less programmatic than those of blots. In the end, she encounters a group of blots sitting at a table. They clear a space for her, and she moves toward it. Why does she make this decision?


newyorker--2020-03-16--Slide Show: New Yorker Cartoons March 23, 2020

“ Big mixup at the airport .
I ’ ll tell you about it later .
I see my bag @ @ @ @ @

“Big mixup at the airport. I’ll tell you about it later. I see my bag waiting for me.”
Cartoon by Pia Guerra and Ian Boothby