newyorker--2020-10-12--Roddy Doyle on Writing from the Pandemic

I was in Edinburgh , in Scotland , when the lockdown was announced in Ireland .
I suddenly felt very far from home .
I ’ d been doing a week of events in different British cities .
After the Edinburgh event , I watched the BBC News as Britain ’ s chief scientific adviser explained the concept of “ herd immunity , ” and the practicalities—how the elderly and vulnerable would be cocooned .
Yet the following morning the streets were full of elderly people .
There was no social distancing—as was happening in Ireland—and none of the hand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to my family , had already become normal in Dublin .
I travelled by train to Newcastle and felt even further from home .
The hotel foyer and bar were packed with men from Northern Ireland , all of them wearing “ Hawaii Five-0 ” shirts and drinking cocktails from pint glasses—this was three o ’ clock in the afternoon .
Back home , the cafés , restaurants , and pubs were shut ; here , the party was just starting .
I didn ’ t want to touch a surface @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exhale .
I flew home to Dublin the following day , half convinced that I was Typhoid Mary , carrying the virus into my country and into my house .
I ’ d been working on a novel—I ’ d just started it .
It ’ s set in the present day , and I realized , as I tried to continue work on it , that I didn ’ t know what the present day was .
It wasn ’ t the thing it had been two weeks before , or even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set it aside , and I thought that short stories might be the way to capture the moments I was now witnessing .
So I started writing the story that became “ Life Without Children.
” Alan feels anxious much of the time , and the fact that he ’ s alone on this trip means there ’ s even more opportunity for self-interrogation .
Has he always questioned himself in this way , or is this a state of mind that he ’ s fallen into in recent years ?
Can he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has changed ; he ’ s stopped being a father , as he understood the role , and has nothing to replace it .
So , in a sense , the definition hasn ’ t changed ; it ’ s just disappeared .
He feels redundant and has felt that way for quite a while .
But then—suddenly , and somehow—he ’ s in the middle of history .
He ’ s alive , vital , and scared .
It ’ s refreshing and clarifying .
He feels he has options .
What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he knows he has an imagination .
I think he ’ ll be fine .
He ’ ll be going home with a great story .
The pubs in Newcastle and Gateshead are full of stag and hen parties—or bachelor and bachelorette parties , as they ’ re known over here .
In the age of COVID-19 , this kind of ebullient celebration represents nothing but potential danger .
What was it like for Alan—and you—to think of them in that way ?
Stag and hen parties have always baffled me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve always tended to go down to the pub ; I ’ ve never really needed a theme or an excuse .
Stags and hens have always seemed a bit silly and desperate .
Now there seems to be something both defiant and lemming-like—and just plain stupid—about them .
I live in a small country , and it ’ s amazing how the behavior of a few people can be mapped , the impact their habits and movements can have on the larger population .
One couple ’ s weekend infected more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their life style wouldn ’ t have merited any attention .
Now , they ’ re some grim Bonnie and Clyde—without the hats or the banjos .
Your latest novel , “ Love , ” was published in the U.S. this summer ( it comes out in the U.K. and Ireland this fall ) .
It ’ s about two old friends who are now in their early sixties .
They spend an evening together , drinking and talking about their lives .
The characters are in a similar phase of life to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the night , they ’ re able to confide in each other .
Is it hard for Irish men of that generation to reveal themselves in this way ?
“ Love ” is a novel because of the difficulty Irish men of my generation have in expressing their feelings and in revealing themselves .
I like to think that if the two men , Davy and Joe , were a bit younger , it would be a short story .
What Joe and Davy have , I think , is each other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to understand and appreciate this .
They ’ ve shared so much and can , if they wish , continue to share or , at least , to keep in touch .
Alan , on the other hand , is alone .
But he realizes that his best friend is his wife .
There ’ s very little conversation in “ Life Without Children , ” while “ Love ” is constructed largely of it .
Do the two modes of writing feel different to you ?
Not really .
I sometimes imagine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to my characters ’ heads .
In “ Love , ” there are two heads ; in “ Life Without Children , ” there ’ s only one .
But it ’ s the same camera .
The camera takes in words instead of images , and in the case of “ Life Without Children ” there ’ s only one set of words .
The extra character is always a relief , somehow , a chance to lift the camera off my shoulder while I adjust the angle .
But , then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men , is narrated by only one .
There ’ s an intensity ; the camera is a weight .
And the extra voice is always welcome , an opportunity to move .
I hope that makes sense .
Ireland has been slowly emerging from lockdown this summer .
What were those months of lockdown like for you ?
How did you imagine all the fictional characters you ’ ve created over the years would have coped with it ?
We seem to be heading into a new lockdown .
I live in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the county .
I was in the city center this morning ; everything was shut—there was nowhere to sit .
The place is quite desolate .
It took me a while to get the hang of the lockdown .
In some ways , nothing changed .
I worked at home before the lockdown , and continued to .
But I stopped writing the novel I ’ d started ; “ the present day ” was no longer the thing it had been when I ’ d started it .
The new novel ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ production of a play I ’ d spent a year writing was also postponed .
Another play was cancelled .
It took me a while to think of the new “ present day , ” the moments , as creative opportunities .
The politicians here did a great job at the start of the crisis , I think .
They communicated clearly and consistently , and there was a sense that , somehow , we were in this thing together—that there was a nation .
So it was an odd but very welcome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and living in Ireland .

Photograph by Leonardo Cendamo / Getty
Your story in this week’s issue, “Life Without Children,” takes place in March, just as the coronavirus pandemic is hitting Europe, and a Dublin man, Alan, is in the North of England on a work trip. Ireland has already started to shut down, while the U.K. is still open and pubs and clubs are packed. Why did you want to set the story at this particular time?
I was in Edinburgh, in Scotland, when the lockdown was announced in Ireland. I suddenly felt very far from home. I’d been doing a week of events in different British cities. After the Edinburgh event, I watched the BBC News as Britain’s chief scientific adviser explained the concept of “herd immunity,” and the practicalities—how the elderly and vulnerable would be cocooned. Yet the following morning the streets were full of elderly people. There was no social distancing—as was happening in Ireland—and none of the hand sanitizers or signs about hand washing that, according to my family, had already become normal in Dublin. I travelled by train to Newcastle and felt even further from home. The hotel foyer and bar were packed with men from Northern Ireland, all of them wearing “Hawaii Five-0” shirts and drinking cocktails from pint glasses—this was three o’clock in the afternoon. Back home, the cafés, restaurants, and pubs were shut; here, the party was just starting. I didn’t want to touch a surface; I tried not to inhale and exhale. I flew home to Dublin the following day, half convinced that I was Typhoid Mary, carrying the virus into my country and into my house. I’d been working on a novel—I’d just started it. It’s set in the present day, and I realized, as I tried to continue work on it, that I didn’t know what the present day was. It wasn’t the thing it had been two weeks before, or even two days before. I decided to set it aside, and I thought that short stories might be the way to capture the moments I was now witnessing. So I started writing the story that became “Life Without Children.”
Alan feels anxious much of the time, and the fact that he’s alone on this trip means there’s even more opportunity for self-interrogation. Has he always questioned himself in this way, or is this a state of mind that he’s fallen into in recent years? Can he escape it?
Alan’s self-definition has changed; he’s stopped being a father, as he understood the role, and has nothing to replace it. So, in a sense, the definition hasn’t changed; it’s just disappeared. He feels redundant and has felt that way for quite a while. But then—suddenly, and somehow—he’s in the middle of history. He’s alive, vital, and scared. It’s refreshing and clarifying. He feels he has options. What is more important, perhaps, is that he knows he has an imagination. I think he’ll be fine. He’ll be going home with a great story.
The pubs in Newcastle and Gateshead are full of stag and hen parties—or bachelor and bachelorette parties, as they’re known over here. In the age of COVID-19, this kind of ebullient celebration represents nothing but potential danger. What was it like for Alan—and you—to think of them in that way?
Stag and hen parties have always baffled me. If I want a drink, I’ve always tended to go down to the pub; I’ve never really needed a theme or an excuse. Stags and hens have always seemed a bit silly and desperate. Now there seems to be something both defiant and lemming-like—and just plain stupid—about them. I live in a small country, and it’s amazing how the behavior of a few people can be mapped, the impact their habits and movements can have on the larger population. One couple’s weekend infected more than thirty people! In January, their life style wouldn’t have merited any attention. Now, they’re some grim Bonnie and Clyde—without the hats or the banjos.
Your latest novel, “Love,” was published in the U.S. this summer (it comes out in the U.K. and Ireland this fall). It’s about two old friends who are now in their early sixties. They spend an evening together, drinking and talking about their lives. The characters are in a similar phase of life to Alan, but, over the course of the night, they’re able to confide in each other. Is it hard for Irish men of that generation to reveal themselves in this way?
“Love” is a novel because of the difficulty Irish men of my generation have in expressing their feelings and in revealing themselves. I like to think that if the two men, Davy and Joe, were a bit younger, it would be a short story. What Joe and Davy have, I think, is each other, and it takes them all night to understand and appreciate this. They’ve shared so much and can, if they wish, continue to share or, at least, to keep in touch. Alan, on the other hand, is alone. But he realizes that his best friend is his wife.
There’s very little conversation in “Life Without Children,” while “Love” is constructed largely of it. Do the two modes of writing feel different to you?
Not really. I sometimes imagine I’m holding a camera close to my characters’ heads. In “Love,” there are two heads; in “Life Without Children,” there’s only one. But it’s the same camera. The camera takes in words instead of images, and in the case of “Life Without Children” there’s only one set of words. The extra character is always a relief, somehow, a chance to lift the camera off my shoulder while I adjust the angle. But, then, the novel, although about two men, is narrated by only one. There’s an intensity; the camera is a weight. And the extra voice is always welcome, an opportunity to move. I hope that makes sense.
Ireland has been slowly emerging from lockdown this summer. What were those months of lockdown like for you? How did you imagine all the fictional characters you’ve created over the years would have coped with it?
We seem to be heading into a new lockdown. I live in Dublin and am not allowed to leave the county. I was in the city center this morning; everything was shut—there was nowhere to sit. The place is quite desolate. It took me a while to get the hang of the lockdown. In some ways, nothing changed. I worked at home before the lockdown, and continued to. But I stopped writing the novel I’d started; “the present day” was no longer the thing it had been when I’d started it. The new novel’s publication was postponed, and the production of a play I’d spent a year writing was also postponed. Another play was cancelled. It took me a while to think of the new “present day,” the moments, as creative opportunities. The politicians here did a great job at the start of the crisis, I think. They communicated clearly and consistently, and there was a sense that, somehow, we were in this thing together—that there was a nation. So it was an odd but very welcome feeling: I really like being Irish and living in Ireland.


newyorker--2020-10-12--Andrew Cuomo, the King of New York

Andrew Cuomo, the King of New York

“ It ’ s all been exposed , ” Andrew Cuomo , the Governor of New York , told me recently .
“ Trump was exposed .
The lies are exposed .
The incompetence is exposed .
It ’ s like low tide in the ocean .
Now the whole shoreline is exposed .
There ’ s no question as to what was under the water.
” Cuomo was busy contending with some other new COVID clusters—a dozen or so , many in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in and around New York City .
The onset of autumn had brought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complicated the delicate task of opening up while keeping numbers down .
Last week , Hasidim were out in the streets , angrily protesting the Governor ’ s abrupt restrictions on religious gatherings in certain communities .
In their eyes , he was doing too much , at least to them .
Still , most New Yorkers felt that Cuomo had done a commendable and by some measures miraculous job bringing New York back from the brink .
The image they ’ d formed of him , at the height of the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the terror of those weeks in the spring , and the devastation of the numbers .
A Saturday in April : the confirmed death count , statewide , was five hundred and seven .
The days had all started to seem the same , at least to those people fortunate enough to be able to say so .
From a distance , what set one morning apart from another was its place on the curve—the tally of new COVID-19 fatalities .
On Sunday , from a medical-research center in Manhasset , on Long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the media and the many citizens watching on their screens .
For seven weeks , he had been delivering daily briefings , to widespread and in some circles ardent acclaim .
The repetitiveness of these performances , the almost liturgical demonstrations of what seemed like good sense , was itself calming , especially in contrast with whatever fresh craziness came out of the White House each night .
Cuomo , by leaning on data , brandishing logic , speaking in paragraphs , and expressing something like human feeling , had stepped into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s cynical and capricious response .
In the land of the incoherent , the silver-tongued man is king .
For the first time , the death rate was at an ebb .
“ We are on the other side of the plateau , and the numbers are coming down , ” Cuomo said .
While Joe Biden played possum in his bunker and Trump , in spite of the carnage , maintained some viable wedge of support in the polls , Cuomo was all over TV , with his crisis-time white polo shirt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ themes , which he enunciated with relish : the preference for facts over opinions ( his elongation of “ facts ” giving the word almost another syllable ) , the idea that the virus had come to New York from Europe rather than from China ( his pronunciation of “ China ” either eerily or mockingly similar to Trump ’ s ) , and this concept of “ New York tough , ” which , as he kept explaining , with the assistance of PowerPoint slides , meant tough not just in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the city ( and with him ) but also “ smart , disciplined , unified , loving.
” Loving !
Here was a politician known as a man who doesn ’ t much like people and whom most people don ’ t like , at least in the way you might , say , a colleague or a friend .
“ He was born for social distancing , ” a former aide told me .
When people thought of him , they pictured a calculating , very capable , somewhat grim tactician , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and intrigue—a mechanic of government , it was usually said , in a nod both to his understanding of the levers of power and to his talent for tinkering with muscle cars .
But now the Prince of Darkness ( a tag he ’ d always resisted ) was a self-proclaimed “ cool dude in a loose mood , ” or , as his younger brother , Chris , the CNN correspondent , kidded him during their regular mock interviews , the Love Gov .
The comedian Randy Rainbow came out as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ orientation was born .
The public snickered about his nipples—or even speculated about nipple rings—visible beneath his white polo , just below the state seal .
“ If it were up to the women , ” my friend Anna wrote me , “ G❤v Cu❤m❤ wld be on all the time .
He is , among most of my friends , 🔥.
” It could be the voice , which has the timbre and phrasing of his father ’ s , the way it alights softly on certain plosives , on the letters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” the “ S ” s becoming “ Z ” s .
The way he intones “ LaGuardia ” as he claims credit , deservedly , for building its new terminals .
Among the fans of the sound of his voice , you ’ d probably have to include Cuomo himself .
“ This is a guy who knows he has a moment , and he ’ s not going to waste it , ” a former city official told me .
Throughout the crisis , the Governor , who is sixty-two , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Matilda , unable to see her grandchildren ; about Chris , afflicted by COVID and quarantined , sort of , in his basement in the Hamptons ; about his three daughters , Cara , Mariah , and Michaela , who had come to live with him during the quarantine , something he noted so often that anyone who ’ d been through a divorce might have wondered if he was doing it to nettle the ex-wife .
The ex was Kerry Kennedy , a daughter of Bobby and Ethel .
“ Part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for him , ” a woman who was going wild for him wrote me one day , “ it ’ s the daughters .
They adore him .
And he seems to have saved them from the Kennedy curse .
He put the iron in their souls.
” On this Sunday , the day after the confirmed deaths of five hundred and seven people , Cuomo eased into one of his familial tangents : “ I come from an Italian-American household where we had a great tradition on Sundays—the family had to come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They called it dinner , but it started at two o ’ clock in the afternoon—I don ’ t really know why they called it dinner .
But everybody was at the table .
Spaghetti and meatballs every Sunday.
” Now his daughters were home ; he ’ d already started cooking the sauce .
Can you imagine Trump stirring a sauce ?
Cuomo then summoned the sitcom-dad persona he ’ d been trying out .
“ Mariah brought her boyfriend , ” he said .
“ The boyfriend is very nice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Advice to fathers : the answer of what you think of the boyfriend is always ‘ I like the boyfriend.
’ Always.
” At this point , Cuomo was , as one longtime antagonist described it to me in the spring , “ the boyfriend of all America.
” Whether you liked the boyfriend or not , you said you liked the boyfriend .
He seemed better than the other guys—the President a maniac , the Mayor a buffoon .
But what would happen when people got to know the boyfriend a little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in mind : independent investigations of police-abuse charges , transparency with police disciplinary records .
His voice had attained that higher , singsong pitch it sometimes does when he is strenuously insisting on something , in this case the failure of the political establishment to fix the relationship between the community and the police and , more broadly , the long-standing inequities between white and Black , rich and poor , in education , housing , and health services .
It was an impassioned call from a mainstream Democrat for a new progressivism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
These were stirring words , but , to people who ’ d been paying attention to Cuomo , they came with some dissonance .
And not just because the next day he announced , with Mayor Bill de Blasio , a curfew for New York City , the first in seventy-five years , and a surge in the deployment of police , or because , in the nights ahead , the police went on a spree of violence against peaceful protesters .
It was almost as if he were calling himself out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political establishment , who was ?
He was approaching the midpoint of his third term ; he ’ d been governor for almost ten years .
Before that , he ’ d been the New York attorney general , and , well before that , in the eighties , a top adviser to his father , Mario , during his three terms as governor , and , in the nineties , Bill Clinton ’ s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development .
Though Cuomo lamented that many of his progressive efforts had been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frustrated about how hard it is to get that political machine , that governmental machine , to turn .
It ’ s like a big freighter coming down the river ” —he seemed to be describing an agenda that he , for most of his time as governor , had often quietly done his best to thwart .
Frequently , it was he who kept the freighter steaming straight ahead .
The latest crisis drew new attention to the quandary of Cuomo : the Cuomo people see on TV and the Cuomo people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incongruities are almost universal in politics and government , but there ’ s something particularly fraught about Cuomo ’ s contradictions—the promise that comes with such power and political skill versus the bitter fruit it can bear .
Even before the death of George Floyd ( Mr. Floyd , as Cuomo almost always refers to him ) , the public perception of the Governor ’ s handling of the pandemic , in many quarters , had started to adjust .
As eloquent as he was , as competent as he ’ d seemed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world ’ s worst outbreak , with a staggering number of deaths and hospitalizations .
Much of this could be ascribed to the density and inequity of New York City , along with its airports , which served as the main ports of entry for flights arriving from the most infected regions of Europe .
Cuomo reminded everyone that the virus had ambushed us precisely because the federal government had paid it such scant attention .
But even if one allowed for the fog of war , and the pieties of hindsight , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the earliest days of the pandemic were indicative of a governing style often hampered by political calculation and personal pique .
People came after him either for overreacting or for underreacting .
The overreaction critique came mostly from the right , from the open-it-up-ers , who felt that a statewide shutdown , and the Governor ’ s dire requests for forty thousand ventilators , had been excessive , a product of hysteria and a desire to undermine Trump .
This was easy to parry .
Cuomo credibly made the case that the ventilator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on worst-case models issued or endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and other public-health authorities .
He ’ d deferred to the scientists , as the Trump Administration kept failing to do .
And the shutdown did flatten the curve , greatly diminishing fatalities and hospital overload .
In a pandemic , you hope to be accused , afterward , of having overreacted .

When de Blasio sought reëlection, Cuomo, unable to get anyone to run against him, had to defer to the logic, as one Democratic operative said, of “Shit, this guy’s not going anywhere.” The Mayor took his subsequent reëlection to be a refreshment of his mandate: the illogic of “Fuck this guy, I won.”
They fell back into their designated roles: Cuomo the bully, de Blasio the bleeder. As one adviser put it, “The Mayor recognizes he can’t win, that Andrew Cuomo is a shark, and that fighting with him doesn’t help the city. He knows the Governor only respects political violence. But de Blasio is his own worst enemy.”
Sometimes it’s hard to decipher whether Cuomo is benefitting from luck or playing the long game. He allowed de Blasio to twist in the wind during the first significant crisis of his mayoralty, after Eric Garner was choked to death by a policeman, on Staten Island. A grand jury’s failure to indict the officer led to protests, in the city and across the country, and then to the murder of two cops, by a man from out of town. During the protests, de Blasio, who had campaigned on police reform and who had curtailed the stop-and-frisk tactics of the previous regime, criticized the department and talked frankly about having spoken to his son, who is biracial, about the dangers of coming of age in a city where the cops routinely mistreat young Black men. Pat Lynch, the head of the Police Benevolent Association, considering these remarks to be an attack on his members, accused de Blasio of having blood on his hands, and advised him not to attend officers’ funerals. The Mayor showed up to the two cops’ burials anyway, and hundreds of uniformed police turned their backs on him.
De Blasio had asked Cuomo for help in calming relations with the police unions, but the Governor demurred. (The Governor’s aides deny this.) At the funeral, union leaders were seen huddling with members of Cuomo’s staff. That year, Lynch’s union (which recently endorsed Trump for President) named Cuomo its Man of the Year.
Soon after the death of George Floyd, and a night of looting, the police began roughing up peaceful protesters. On June 4th, Cuomo seemed unaware of all the video evidence of their tactics, and he not only defended the police but chided a reporter for asking about the incidents. “You see, it’s that kind of incendiary rhetoric that is not a fact,” he said. “It’s not even an opinion. That is a hyper-partisan rhetorical attack.” Later, perhaps having seen and been shocked by the videos and recognizing the irrefutability of the evidence, he condemned the police, while the Mayor, who needed the police on his side, stayed quiet. Five years on, the P.B.A.’s Man of the Year had outflanked the Mayor with blood on his hands.
“Why does Bill look like an idiot?” the former city official told me. “Because Bill always looks like an idiot. When shit flies around, it’s gonna stick to him.”
In mid-June, after a hundred and ten days, Cuomo ended his daily briefings. Deaths had dropped, from around a thousand a day to twenty-five. Hospitalizations were down more than ninety per cent. His approval rating for his handling of COVID was in the seventies. He took his place at the dais, flanked by his supporting characters, and removed his mask. Though he repeated many themes and phrases of the previous few weeks and months, his remarks had a valedictory heft that might have been keyed to a national audience. In the coming days, Cuomo still seemed to show up on TV every day, but now mostly as a talk-show guest. Clearly, it was hard to stay away.
One night, he revived the Chris-and-the-Love-Gov act with his brother, who said, “I hope you are able to appreciate what you did in your state and what it means for the rest of the country now and what it will always mean to those who love and care about you the most,” adding, “I’m wowed by what you did, and, more importantly, I’m wowed by how you did it.” The deployment of the past tense, this grammatical suggestion that the job was done, had sneaked into the Governor’s speech as well. In terms of self-congratulation, it wasn’t quite “Mission Accomplished” aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, but this rearview mirroring of the pandemic—the surge and decline, the crisis and its containment—suggested a victory lap. Cuomo had started writing a book (“American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which comes out this week). One day, near the end of June, he unveiled a foam sculpture of a mountain. Its contours matched the graph of the upward and downward death-rate slope he’d been displaying at his briefings. (The mountain was his long-running metaphor for the ordeal. “We don’t want a mountain range,” he’d kept saying.) People compared his mountain, painted Army green, to Jabba the Hutt or Richard Dreyfuss’s towers of mud in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or the miniature Stonehenge in “Spinal Tap.”
A couple of weeks later, Cuomo produced another work of gubernatorial folk art, this one a poster, an illustration composed of images and text in the style of political posters of the Gilded Age. It depicted a mountain—may we call it the mountain?—with various COVID milestones along the way. An image of a white-water torrent was labelled “Economy Falls.” (“Get it?” Cuomo said, at the press conference. “Like Niagara Falls.”) Beneath this was an image of flames (“New Rochelle Hot Spot”) and one of a nose with a swab in it (“Testing, Tracing”), which brought to mind both the day the Governor, on camera, submitted to a COVID test and the ensuing bit, on CNN, with Chris, who, while joking about the size of his older brother’s nose, brandished a makeshift swab the size of a toilet plunger. (If there were a Cuomo-bros poster, that big-nose gag would be the pinnacle: peak Cuomo.) In the poster, on the far side of the mountain, a young man dangled from a crag—“Boyfriend Cliff”—in such a way that it looked as if he’d been forced off the ledge by the Governor, depicted in his Pontiac GTO. Beneath the car, and above the words “111 Days of Hell,” was a quote from A. J. Parkinson: “Tell the People the Truth and They Will Do the Right Thing.”
The news had generally got so surreal—one day after another of things you didn’t have on your 2020 bingo card—that sometimes one could lose sight of how odd Cuomo’s performance was. At some point in April, he began attributing bits of wisdom to this fellow A. J. Parkinson. At first, just a few old Cuomo hands knew what was going on. Mario Cuomo had invented Parkinson almost forty years ago, as a vessel for manufactured adages. The elder Cuomo possessed, to quote his aide Tim Russert, “the world’s only complete collection of Parkinson.” When reporters, trying to get in on the joke, unearthed some Parkinsonisms of their own, such as “When in doubt, mull” or “Let them eat polenta,” Mario chided them, “A. J. Parkinson never said those things.” (The latter remark he attributed to his mother, Immaculata, one of whose actual quotes he had, in turn, attributed to Aristotle.) Now Andrew was reviving the practice, and the ghost of A. J. Parkinson: another character in the multigenerational menagerie, here to see us through the plague.
“Good night. Sleep quietly.” Cartoon by William Haefeli Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
With the victory lap, and some of the goofiness that surrounded it, came renewed scrutiny of Cuomo’s pandemic performance. The most stinging critique had to do with the death rate in New York’s nursing homes, which are privately operated but state regulated. The Cuomo administration had issued an advisory, on March 25th, that seniors who tested positive for the coronavirus or who reported symptoms couldn’t be turned away from being readmitted to nursing homes from hospitals. The rationale, as Cuomo and his health commissioner, Howard Zucker, later tried to explain, was that they needed to make hospital beds available for the predicted surge in COVID cases—which never quite materialized. Nursing-home staff were to be allowed to keep working if they tested positive but were symptom-free. In the end, the virus passed through the nursing homes like “fire through dry grass,” as Cuomo himself put it. By mid-June, more than six thousand elderly nursing-home residents had died, constituting about a quarter of the state’s COVID fatalities. (This number includes both confirmed and probable deaths, but does not include residents who died in hospitals.)
Nursing-home operators complained of being overwhelmed and under-provisioned, of lacking adequate access to testing. (Cuomo’s office blamed the shortage on the federal government.) Critics held that the health department had focussed on the hospital system and all but ignored the nursing homes. The Cuomo administration launched inspections of the nursing homes, which some took to be an attempt to silence them, under the perceived threat of the state’s decertification power.
Cuomo pointed out repeatedly that, by the metric of nursing-home deaths as a percentage of all COVID deaths, New York State ranked among the lowest nationwide, and that the original advisory had been in accordance with guidelines from the C.D.C, which were intended to protect seniors from discrimination and keep medical staff on the job. If anyone had been negligent, he said, it was the federal government. “Blame Mr. Trump,” he said.
But many Democrats who blamed Trump were capable of blaming Cuomo, too. When Zucker appeared before the Legislature, State Senator Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said, “It seems, sir, that you are choosing the information so that you can look better.”
In July, Cuomo’s health department released a report saying that, according to Zucker’s analysis of the data, the virus had infiltrated nursing homes well before the March 25th directive—that, therefore, it was the health workers, and not readmitted residents, who’d sparked the dry grass. But, by then, the sides in the debate had hardened, and Zucker was accused by the policy’s critics of taking part in a political stunt, and of scapegoating health-care workers, to cover for his own department’s supposed mistakes, as well as his boss’s. Meanwhile, Cuomo, at his press conferences, dismissed questions about an independent nursing-home inquiry as being politically motivated, a crusade concocted by the Post and Fox News. But even Democrats in the Legislature were now pushing for an investigation. “I don’t think the health-department report was adequate or thorough,” Liz Krueger, a state senator from Manhattan, said.
Bill Hammond, a senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center, in Albany (dismissed by the Governor’s staff as a “shady right-wing think tank”), drawing on reporting in the Wall Street Journal, noted that a powerful industry group called the Greater New York Hospital Association had pushed for the nursing-home policy. The Association had also contributed a million dollars to the state Democratic Party in 2018, at Cuomo’s request, and had lobbied the administration successfully for an increase in Medicaid reimbursements, at a time when the state was already running a multibillion-dollar deficit in its Medicaid payouts. “I get skeptical of quid-pro-quo narratives,” Hammond told me. “This stuff is built into the system, and you can never prove there’s a specific trade. But this one was so unusual, it felt like a specific swap.”


newyorker--2020-10-12--Chase Strangio’s Victories for Transgender Rights

The Court never says which decisions will be announced on a particular day , although the three biggest decisions advancing L.G.B.T.Q .
rights arrived , coincidentally , on June 26th : Lawrence v. Texas , which struck down sodomy laws , in 2003 ; United States v. Windsor , which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act , in 2013 ; and Obergefell v. Hodges , which affirmed the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry , in 2015 .
By that precedent , it still felt early to expect a ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County , which took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who fires a worker for being gay or transgender is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 .
Two plaintiffs , Gerald Bostock and Donald Zarda , whose cases were consolidated , were gay men ; a third , represented by the A.C.L.U.
, was Aimee Stephens , a transgender woman who , in 2013 , was fired from her job at a funeral home in Michigan after she informed her employer that she was transitioning .
It seemed unlikely to Strangio that the decision in Bostock would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Anthony Kennedy , who retired in 2018 , had been the swing vote in earlier cases .
Now the L.G.B.T.Q .
advocates ’ hopes hinged on Neil Gorsuch , perhaps the Court ’ s strictest proponent of textualism , the idea that a court should adhere to the words of a law—in this case , Title VII ’ s prohibition of discrimination “ on the basis of sex ” —without taking into account the lawmakers ’ original intentions .
David Cole , the national legal director of the A.C.L.U.
, aimed his arguments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was difficult to fathom that Gorsuch , President Trump ’ s first Supreme Court appointee , would take a stand in favor of gay and transgender rights .
On Friday , June 12th , the Department of Health and Human Services had released a new rule that eliminated protections against sex discrimination in health care for transgender patients—the latest of the Trump Administration ’ s many blows to trans rights .
A good outcome in Bostock , however , might render the new health-care rule moot .
Strangio told me , “ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Trump Administration doesn ’ t have the final word on sex discrimination—the Supreme Court does.
’ And I was thinking , Yes , and then we ’ ll lose.
” At 9:50 A.M. on June 15th , after Strangio rushed his child through online school assignments , he joined a Zoom call with most of the A.C.L.U .
team that worked on the case—twenty-two people , including interns and assistants .
In pre-COVID times , they would have attempted to cram into Strangio ’ s tiny , windowless office at the A.C.L.U @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Refresh button on the Supreme Court Web site .
He and his colleagues could see that an opinion in their case was posted to the site , and that Gorsuch had written it—possibly a good sign .
But the document refused to load .
Strangio , punching Refresh again and again , and still talking to his colleagues , started tweeting : A minute later , a single page loaded , enough for Strangio and the others to see “ Held : An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terms.
” One minute after that : Chief Justice John Roberts , who had dissented in the Windsor and Obergefell decisions , had joined the majority .
Finally , all thirty-three pages of Gorsuch ’ s text loaded .
( Slowing things down was Justice Samuel Alito ’ s furious hundred-and-seven-page dissent , which included eleven pages of dictionary definitions of sex and twenty-six pages of images of military-enlistment forms . )
Strangio tweeted a screenshot from the last page of the Court ’ s opinion : “ An employer who fires an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defies the law .
.
.
.
It is so ordered.
” Around this time , Strangio got a call from Laverne Cox , one of the stars of “ Orange Is the New Black ” and a fellow trans-rights activist .
Cox had taken Strangio to the Emmys as her plus-one and later accompanied him to oral arguments at the Supreme Court .
They laughed and cried together on Instagram Live over the decision ; Strangio marvelled that the trans-rights movement had convinced the likes of “ Gorsuch and Roberts and this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cox wore a black tuxedo gown and mesh gloves over manicured hands—a glamorous apparition from pre-COVID days .
Strangio realized that he was still wearing his mother ’ s hoodie over the T-shirt he had slept in .
During the months of COVID-enforced seclusion , two people who played large roles in Strangio ’ s life had died .
His friend Lorena Borjas , a Queens neighbor and trans activist , with whom Strangio had co-founded a bail fund for transgender immigrants , died of COVID in March .
Stephens , the transgender @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , after years of ill health .
“ I was thinking , At least she went out with the hope that we might win , ” Strangio said .
This sentiment might have provided some comfort had they lost the case .
He was crushed to think that , after seven years of fighting the employer who fired her for being transgender , Stephens died without knowing she had prevailed .
Strangio , who graduated from law school in 2010 , has worked on some of the most important civil-rights cases of recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transgender rights .
His clients have included Chelsea Manning , the U.S. Army whistle-blower , and Gavin Grimm , the Virginia high-school student who sued his school district for the right to use the bathroom that corresponded to his gender identity .
Strangio has achieved a sort of celebrity as a lawyer and a trans activist .
Last year , Annie Leibovitz photographed him for a Google ad campaign , and this summer he appeared in two new documentaries : “ Disclosure , ” which looks at portrayals of trans people in film @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which profiles five A.C.L.U .
attorneys battling the Trump Administration on various fronts , in which Strangio is featured with his colleague Joshua Block as they craft a case against Trump ’ s ban on transgender military personnel .
Strangio describes designing a legal strategy as “ a combination of a puzzle and an analytical game , and then having to merge a lot of people ’ s views of those things .
It can be brutal .
Each sentence gets rewritten fifty times.
” In the Stephens case , the process was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawsuit was originally brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission .
By the time it reached the Supreme Court , Trump had been President for more than two years and the federal government was now arguing that employment discrimination against a transgender person was legal .
Then Strangio read an article in the Wake Forest Law Review by Katie Eyer , a professor at Rutgers Law School .
Eyer argued that a truly textualist interpretation of Title VII would leave the Justices no choice but to acknowledge that discriminating against people because they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is to discriminate against them on the basis of sex .
“ In the briefing room , I said , ‘ We can win this !
’ ” Strangio said .
“ Then , after the meeting , I thought , But can we ?
” During oral arguments , Gorsuch affirmed the A.C.L.U.
’ s approach— “ I ’ m with you on the textual evidence , ” he told Cole—but he asked if the Court should “ take into consideration the massive social upheaval that would be entailed in such a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and public bathrooms .
Cole responded that trans people , and transgender rights , exist , and are widely recognized already .
“ There are transgender male lawyers in this courtroom following the male dress code and going to the men ’ s room , and the Court ’ s dress code and sex-segregated rest rooms have not fallen , ” Cole said .
“ So the notion that somehow this is going to be a huge upheaval .
.
.
There ’ s no reason you would see that upheaval .
Transgender @ @ @ @ @ @ @ associated with their gender identity .
It ’ s not disruptive.
” One of the lawyers to whom Cole referred was Strangio , who was seated at the counsel table .
( Another was an A.C.L.U .
colleague , Gabriel Arkles . )
Strangio was wearing a blue plaid tie in a Windsor knot with a white shirt and a gray suit , the sides of his head freshly barbered and the hair on the top gelled solid .
It was perhaps not the first time that trans lawyers had sat at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it was certainly the first time that they had been seen for who they were .
Still , Cole ’ s reassurance that trans people , if granted full civil rights , would behave appropriately—would remain more or less invisible—had a tinge of humiliation .
It was also imprecise : Strangio identifies as trans but not as a man , uses both “ he ” and “ they ” pronouns , likes to paint his nails , and generally defies expectations of gender performance .
Legal cases make up a disproportionately large @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society views queer and trans people .
We are represented by our sexual practices or our coupledom , or we are seen , as trans people often are , as impostors , liars , or interlopers .
The image is rarely nuanced , even when it ’ s positive .
As a trans lawyer , Strangio works as a representative in every sense of the word : in court , in the media , and sometimes in state legislatures , for his clients , for the trans community , and for himself .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ adolescence .
His best friend from those years , Jenny Rossman , who is now a sex-crimes prosecutor in Orlando , Florida , told me that Chase took care of Joan and “ made sure that Noah was protected.
” Noah , who was awarded a Bronze Star while serving in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and now works in tech in the Bay Area , has maintained friendly relations with their father ; Chase , who described his father last year as “ a die hard Fox News watching Trump voter , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ continues to be protective of Joan .
I met her on my visit to Newton , but she was the one person he didn ’ t want me to interview . )
In high school , Strangio played on the girls ’ soccer team , and gained early admission to Williams College .
The summer after graduating from high school , he worked at J. P. Licks , an ice-cream parlor in Newton Centre , where some of the other employees were students at Oberlin College , in Ohio .
“ They were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Or at least some of them were.
” So , it seemed , was he .
Rossman said , “ I don ’ t remember him coming out that summer—it was more like ‘ This is who I ’ m hanging out with .
This is what I ’ m understanding.
’ ” It wasn ’ t a surprise .
Rossman didn ’ t recall any of Strangio ’ s high-school boyfriends , but she remembered that , as far back as seventh grade , he decorated the walls of his bedroom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paltrow ’ s then boyfriend , Brad Pitt .

On the morning of Monday, June 15th, Chase Strangio, the deputy director for transgender justice at the American Civil Liberties Union’s L.G.B.T. & H.I.V. Project, woke up in his childhood bedroom, in Newton, Massachusetts. After three months of isolating in his small apartment, in Queens, Strangio had driven with his seven-year-old child to Newton, an affluent, liberal suburb of Boston, to see his mother, Joan. Strangio had just buzzed the sides and the back of his head—his quarantine substitute for what used to be a weekly barbershop visit, and a grooming ritual for whenever the Supreme Court might be expected to hand down a decision. The thatch of dark, glossy hair on the top of his head had gone untouched since mid-March. He’d also brought a blazer to his mother’s house, in case he was asked to make media appearances.
The Court never says which decisions will be announced on a particular day, although the three biggest decisions advancing L.G.B.T.Q. rights arrived, coincidentally, on June 26th: Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws, in 2003; United States v. Windsor, which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, in 2013; and Obergefell v. Hodges, which affirmed the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry, in 2015. By that precedent, it still felt early to expect a ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which took up the question of whether an employer who fires a worker for being gay or transgender is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Two plaintiffs, Gerald Bostock and Donald Zarda, whose cases were consolidated, were gay men; a third, represented by the A.C.L.U., was Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman who, in 2013, was fired from her job at a funeral home in Michigan after she informed her employer that she was transitioning.
It seemed unlikely to Strangio that the decision in Bostock would be a victory for his side. Anthony Kennedy, who retired in 2018, had been the swing vote in earlier cases. Now the L.G.B.T.Q. advocates’ hopes hinged on Neil Gorsuch, perhaps the Court’s strictest proponent of textualism, the idea that a court should adhere to the words of a law—in this case, Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination “on the basis of sex”—without taking into account the lawmakers’ original intentions. David Cole, the national legal director of the A.C.L.U., aimed his arguments plainly at Gorsuch. Still, it was difficult to fathom that Gorsuch, President Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, would take a stand in favor of gay and transgender rights. On Friday, June 12th, the Department of Health and Human Services had released a new rule that eliminated protections against sex discrimination in health care for transgender patients—the latest of the Trump Administration’s many blows to trans rights. A good outcome in Bostock, however, might render the new health-care rule moot. Strangio told me, “I had spent all weekend saying, ‘The Trump Administration doesn’t have the final word on sex discrimination—the Supreme Court does.’ And I was thinking, Yes, and then we’ll lose.”
At 9:50 A.M. on June 15th, after Strangio rushed his child through online school assignments, he joined a Zoom call with most of the A.C.L.U. team that worked on the case—twenty-two people, including interns and assistants. In pre-COVID times, they would have attempted to cram into Strangio’s tiny, windowless office at the A.C.L.U. At 9:59, he started pressing the Refresh button on the Supreme Court Web site. He and his colleagues could see that an opinion in their case was posted to the site, and that Gorsuch had written it—possibly a good sign. But the document refused to load. Strangio, punching Refresh again and again, and still talking to his colleagues, started tweeting:
IT’S HERE! I can’t open it
A minute later, a single page loaded, enough for Strangio and the others to see “Held: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII’s terms.”
Did we win????
Then:
WE FUCKING WON!? I can’t see it
One minute after that:
6 to FUCKING 3.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who had dissented in the Windsor and Obergefell decisions, had joined the majority.
“Too much violence.” Cartoon by Mike Twohy Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
I genuinely think this is a full win. We fully won. The HHS rule is completely void.
Finally, all thirty-three pages of Gorsuch’s text loaded. (Slowing things down was Justice Samuel Alito’s furious hundred-and-seven-page dissent, which included eleven pages of dictionary definitions of sex and twenty-six pages of images of military-enlistment forms.) Strangio tweeted a screenshot from the last page of the Court’s opinion: “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law. . . . It is so ordered.”
I AM SOBBING
Around this time, Strangio got a call from Laverne Cox, one of the stars of “Orange Is the New Black” and a fellow trans-rights activist. Cox had taken Strangio to the Emmys as her plus-one and later accompanied him to oral arguments at the Supreme Court. They laughed and cried together on Instagram Live over the decision; Strangio marvelled that the trans-rights movement had convinced the likes of “Gorsuch and Roberts and this generally awful Court that we exist.” Cox wore a black tuxedo gown and mesh gloves over manicured hands—a glamorous apparition from pre-COVID days. Strangio realized that he was still wearing his mother’s hoodie over the T-shirt he had slept in.
Two days after the decision, Strangio sat on the pavement in the courtyard of his apartment building, in Jackson Heights, wearing an Adidas baseball cap, a gray T-shirt, black skinny jeans, and a pin-striped mask. He has big, captivating blue-green eyes and elfin ears, and even beneath a mask it’s obvious when he’s smiling. He smiles a lot, especially when he talks about himself; he appears to find himself amusing, perhaps ridiculous at times. He was still processing news that seemed almost impossibly good. “I feel the concept of happy, but I don’t feel the emotion of it,” he said. “It’s hard to know how to celebrate in isolation. We have been grieving in isolation, and now celebrating in isolation. I am thinking about all the connections that went into this case, and now everybody is in their own homes.”
During the months of COVID-enforced seclusion, two people who played large roles in Strangio’s life had died. His friend Lorena Borjas, a Queens neighbor and trans activist, with whom Strangio had co-founded a bail fund for transgender immigrants, died of COVID in March. Stephens, the transgender plaintiff in Bostock, died in May, after years of ill health. “I was thinking, At least she went out with the hope that we might win,” Strangio said. This sentiment might have provided some comfort had they lost the case. He was crushed to think that, after seven years of fighting the employer who fired her for being transgender, Stephens died without knowing she had prevailed.
Strangio, who graduated from law school in 2010, has worked on some of the most important civil-rights cases of recent years, especially in the area of transgender rights. His clients have included Chelsea Manning, the U.S. Army whistle-blower, and Gavin Grimm, the Virginia high-school student who sued his school district for the right to use the bathroom that corresponded to his gender identity. Strangio has achieved a sort of celebrity as a lawyer and a trans activist. Last year, Annie Leibovitz photographed him for a Google ad campaign, and this summer he appeared in two new documentaries: “Disclosure,” which looks at portrayals of trans people in film, and “The Fight,” which profiles five A.C.L.U. attorneys battling the Trump Administration on various fronts, in which Strangio is featured with his colleague Joshua Block as they craft a case against Trump’s ban on transgender military personnel.
Strangio describes designing a legal strategy as “a combination of a puzzle and an analytical game, and then having to merge a lot of people’s views of those things. It can be brutal. Each sentence gets rewritten fifty times.” In the Stephens case, the process was laced with dread. Stephens’s lawsuit was originally brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. By the time it reached the Supreme Court, Trump had been President for more than two years and the federal government was now arguing that employment discrimination against a transgender person was legal. Then Strangio read an article in the Wake Forest Law Review by Katie Eyer, a professor at Rutgers Law School. Eyer argued that a truly textualist interpretation of Title VII would leave the Justices no choice but to acknowledge that discriminating against people because they are gay, lesbian, or transgender is to discriminate against them on the basis of sex. “In the briefing room, I said, ‘We can win this!’ ” Strangio said. “Then, after the meeting, I thought, But can we?”
During oral arguments, Gorsuch affirmed the A.C.L.U.’s approach—“I’m with you on the textual evidence,” he told Cole—but he asked if the Court should “take into consideration the massive social upheaval that would be entailed in such a decision,” affecting workplace dress codes and public bathrooms. Cole responded that trans people, and transgender rights, exist, and are widely recognized already. “There are transgender male lawyers in this courtroom following the male dress code and going to the men’s room, and the Court’s dress code and sex-segregated rest rooms have not fallen,” Cole said. “So the notion that somehow this is going to be a huge upheaval . . . There’s no reason you would see that upheaval. Transgender people follow the rule that’s associated with their gender identity. It’s not disruptive.”


newyorker--2020-10-12--Philip Guston and the Boundaries of Art Culture

Art people have been shocked by the postponement , possibly until 2024 , of a major exhibition , “ Philip Guston Now , ” by the institutions that were scheduled to mount it : the National Gallery of Art , in Washington ; the Tate Modern , in London ; the Museum of Fine Arts , Houston ; and the Museum of Fine Arts , Boston .
I shared the reaction until I thought about it .
At issue are some darkly comic paintings by the great American artist which feature cartoonish Ku Klux Klan figures smoking cigars , tootling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ making fools of themselves .
The dark part consists of abject self-portraiture , the focus of works , including the Klan pictures , that dumbfounded the art world when first shown , in 1970 .
At fifty-seven , Guston had trashed his status as the most sensitive stylist of Abstract Expressionism and unclenched raucous pictorial confessions of fear and loathing .
Stricken with such regrets as having , in 1935 , disguised his identity as the son of impoverished Jewish immigrants ( his father hanged himself in 1923 ) by changing his name @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sad sack beset by bad habits and bad thoughts .
The subject matter is self-lacerating , albeit antic .
The form stuns with visceral color , prehensile line , and the most insinuative brushwork of any modern painter , all indirectly nourished by Guston ’ s passionate reverence for Renaissance masters .
He as much as announced that he had nothing going for him except a way with a brush , which he then exalted from a subbasement of the soul .
Long resisted by many—I was slow to come around myself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work has outlasted , in authenticity and quality , that of every other American painter since .
As an inspiration and a challenge , he companions innumerable young painters everywhere , to this day .
( He died , of a heart attack , in 1980 . )
A celebration by leading institutions is entirely in order .
As for the Klansmen , they first appeared briefly , as murderous lynchers , in works that Guston , a lifelong leftist , made in the thirties .
Do they lurk , repressed , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explain the mysterious tension in some of even his most elegant Abstract Expressionism , before they resurfaced as psychological cats out of bags .
But .
.
.
the white hoods , icons of evil at the pitch of swastikas .
Guston ’ s Klansmen are the first—and likely the last—things that most people will notice in the paintings at a time when it can seem that no symbol is safe from being politicized , let alone one already steeped in politics .
What public reception to Klan imagery in a show of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expected ?
( A revolt against it began with staff members at the National Gallery . )
Always risky , perhaps , the unintended but inevitably incendiary provocation belongs to a pre-2020 age of educated innocence .
Does it now reveal the boundary of an art culture that is maintained by and for members of an élite so confident of virtue—putatively independent of race and class , democratically self-selected , oozing benignity—as to be unconscious of existing as such ?
Suddenly silhouetted , the faction is made up of a scant minority of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ art and espouse cosmopolitan values—the culturally privileged , whom museums represent and serve while , these days , laudably trying to extend their appeal to neglected audiences .
The National Gallery ’ s director , Kaywin Feldman , has said that the postponement—note , not the cancellation—responds to “ a tough time in America.
” That ’ s putting things mildly .
The Guston affair is a symptom of a society-wide deterioration of trust in institutions and tolerance for uncongenial expression .
Harsh light falls on long-tacit norms .
Consider the fact , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the museum , that the curators of the show , with its racially charged content , are all white .
A time-out to recontextualize does not , contrary to the thrust of an art-world open letter protesting the postponement , first published by the Brooklyn Rail and then quoted in the Times , constitute cowardice at a national institution .
( Feldman now says that the show is likely to open sooner than was initially announced . )
In a small way , the controversy exemplifies divisions that are splintering the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the good will of contending interests .
( Signatories to the letter include Black artists and intellectuals , as the conflict is widely cultural , not narrowly demographic . )
Any difference may breed enmity .
In our Partisan States of America , we watch our words—or , perversely , don ’ t—for fear of , or with ardent intent of , offending .
Offense doesn ’ t spur debate ; it replaces it .
With apologies for amateur punditry , I doubt that this will stop after the Presidential election even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unity against Trump fragmenting and rightists incubating ungodly new species of insurrection .
Welcome to an argument with myself , as I risk the appearance of wielding cancel culture against my lifelong allies in the cause of art .
Regarding Guston ’ s Klansmen , I ’ m ambushed by imagining the intractable opposition of people who neither find humor nor seek subtlety in racist symbology .
Guston ’ s subject is moral anguish , which , I suspect , increasingly amounts to a thorny luxury for old-fashioned and atomized liberals like me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ viewers new to Guston ?
Do I condescend ?
I can ’ t rule it out .
But what worries me is the assumption by art-world peers of mine that artistic license is an unexceptionable principle , rather than a persuasion of fortune-favored , cultivated liberal sentiment and taste .
If I sound populist here , it ’ s because I ’ m the kind of liberal who is perhaps oversensitive to the feelings of all constituencies .
Having , in thought , stepped outside my cohort , I can ’ t with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I may be that I won ’ t get to see an assuredly wonderful show in the coming months .
I remain preoccupied by the sense of a crisis that spills beyond the misapprehension of a should-be canonical artist .
The trouble resonates backward as well as forward in time .
Indeed , it is endemic to democracy , a seething of differences that now and then boils over .
The cosmopolitan cast of modern art culture has a history .
Until almost the middle of the twentieth century , in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with urban clusters of bohemian mavericks and eccentric patrons , arguably besieged by yahoos .
( From a provincial distance , that myth retained just enough zing in 1962 to make me drop out of college and drive non-stop from Minnesota to New York .
Well , first to a job in Jersey City . )
The glamorization of modernism owed much to the aura of Allied triumph in the Second World War , which established so many other parameters of national amity that have lately , and rapidly , been crumbling .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the charisma of inrushing wealth closed the deal , giving pause even to yahoos .
( You might think that a Jackson Pollock was something your kid could do , and that Andy Warhol ’ s fame was an emperor ’ s-new-clothes con , but you became less apt to say so in unfamiliar company . )
Aggressive innovation remained a punching bag for conservatives , but arguing back was hardly worth the breath .
Cosmopolis won , to its own satisfaction and the apathetic disregard of folk at large .
After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jolts of Minimalism , in the sixties , avant-gardist rebellion turned inward with the esoterica of conceptual art and , later , with applications of critical theory , but they served only to shrink rather than to redraw the public profile of new art .
A glaring precedent for the Guston affair came about with malice aforethought in 1989 , when institutional displays of Robert Mapplethorpe ’ s ( excellent ) homoerotic photographs and Andres Serrano ’ s ( puerile ) “ Piss Christ ” set Senator Jesse Helms , of North Carolina @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The art world soon recovered its obscurity , except for odd blips , until , as emblematized by the trophy aesthetics of Jeff Koons , its values were transmogrified into the news-making prices paid by a speculative international oligarchy of the ultra-rich .
Art goes on .
Art that is transgressive will recur .
But it will do so nakedly for anyone who chooses to characterize it , not only for those initiates who congratulate one another on their shared investment in standards of truth , beauty , and good conscience .
Cold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aspirations to provide society , or even segments of society , with a capacity to bridge differences with mutual respect .
I ’ ve often reflected that uses of “ we ” in critical writing are unavoidably presumptuous , though they are rhetorically meant only to invite , or perhaps to seduce , agreement .
I ’ ve never felt less confidence in the pronoun , at a time of alienations that recall what W. B. Yeats perceived in another pandemic year , 1919 : “ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
@ @

Art people have been shocked by the postponement, possibly until 2024, of a major exhibition, “Philip Guston Now,” by the institutions that were scheduled to mount it: the National Gallery of Art, in Washington; the Tate Modern, in London; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I shared the reaction until I thought about it. At issue are some darkly comic paintings by the great American artist which feature cartoonish Ku Klux Klan figures smoking cigars, tootling around in open cars, and generally making fools of themselves. The dark part consists of abject self-portraiture, the focus of works, including the Klan pictures, that dumbfounded the art world when first shown, in 1970. At fifty-seven, Guston had trashed his status as the most sensitive stylist of Abstract Expressionism and unclenched raucous pictorial confessions of fear and loathing. Stricken with such regrets as having, in 1935, disguised his identity as the son of impoverished Jewish immigrants (his father hanged himself in 1923) by changing his name from Goldstein, he presented himself as a sad sack beset by bad habits and bad thoughts.
The subject matter is self-lacerating, albeit antic. The form stuns with visceral color, prehensile line, and the most insinuative brushwork of any modern painter, all indirectly nourished by Guston’s passionate reverence for Renaissance masters. He as much as announced that he had nothing going for him except a way with a brush, which he then exalted from a subbasement of the soul. Long resisted by many—I was slow to come around myself, having venerated his abstractions—the body of work has outlasted, in authenticity and quality, that of every other American painter since. As an inspiration and a challenge, he companions innumerable young painters everywhere, to this day. (He died, of a heart attack, in 1980.) A celebration by leading institutions is entirely in order. As for the Klansmen, they first appeared briefly, as murderous lynchers, in works that Guston, a lifelong leftist, made in the thirties. Do they lurk, repressed, in his abstractions? This would help to explain the mysterious tension in some of even his most elegant Abstract Expressionism, before they resurfaced as psychological cats out of bags.
But . . . the white hoods, icons of evil at the pitch of swastikas. Guston’s Klansmen are the first—and likely the last—things that most people will notice in the paintings at a time when it can seem that no symbol is safe from being politicized, let alone one already steeped in politics. What public reception to Klan imagery in a show of a white artist can the museums have expected? (A revolt against it began with staff members at the National Gallery.) Always risky, perhaps, the unintended but inevitably incendiary provocation belongs to a pre-2020 age of educated innocence. Does it now reveal the boundary of an art culture that is maintained by and for members of an élite so confident of virtue—putatively independent of race and class, democratically self-selected, oozing benignity—as to be unconscious of existing as such? Suddenly silhouetted, the faction is made up of a scant minority of citizens who take an active interest in art and espouse cosmopolitan values—the culturally privileged, whom museums represent and serve while, these days, laudably trying to extend their appeal to neglected audiences.
The National Gallery’s director, Kaywin Feldman, has said that the postponement—note, not the cancellation—responds to “a tough time in America.” That’s putting things mildly. The Guston affair is a symptom of a society-wide deterioration of trust in institutions and tolerance for uncongenial expression. Harsh light falls on long-tacit norms. Consider the fact, cited by Feldman as a decisive concern of the museum, that the curators of the show, with its racially charged content, are all white. A time-out to recontextualize does not, contrary to the thrust of an art-world open letter protesting the postponement, first published by the Brooklyn Rail and then quoted in the Times, constitute cowardice at a national institution. (Feldman now says that the show is likely to open sooner than was initially announced.)
In a small way, the controversy exemplifies divisions that are splintering the United States: votes of no confidence in the good will of contending interests. (Signatories to the letter include Black artists and intellectuals, as the conflict is widely cultural, not narrowly demographic.) Any difference may breed enmity. In our Partisan States of America, we watch our words—or, perversely, don’t—for fear of, or with ardent intent of, offending. Offense doesn’t spur debate; it replaces it. With apologies for amateur punditry, I doubt that this will stop after the Presidential election even if the conciliatory-minded Biden wins, with liberal unity against Trump fragmenting and rightists incubating ungodly new species of insurrection.
Welcome to an argument with myself, as I risk the appearance of wielding cancel culture against my lifelong allies in the cause of art. Regarding Guston’s Klansmen, I’m ambushed by imagining the intractable opposition of people who neither find humor nor seek subtlety in racist symbology. Guston’s subject is moral anguish, which, I suspect, increasingly amounts to a thorny luxury for old-fashioned and atomized liberals like me. Am I underrating the comprehension of viewers new to Guston? Do I condescend? I can’t rule it out. But what worries me is the assumption by art-world peers of mine that artistic license is an unexceptionable principle, rather than a persuasion of fortune-favored, cultivated liberal sentiment and taste. If I sound populist here, it’s because I’m the kind of liberal who is perhaps oversensitive to the feelings of all constituencies. Having, in thought, stepped outside my cohort, I can’t with honesty jump back in, however pained I may be that I won’t get to see an assuredly wonderful show in the coming months. I remain preoccupied by the sense of a crisis that spills beyond the misapprehension of a should-be canonical artist. The trouble resonates backward as well as forward in time. Indeed, it is endemic to democracy, a seething of differences that now and then boils over.
The cosmopolitan cast of modern art culture has a history. Until almost the middle of the twentieth century, in the United States, it could be popularly associated with urban clusters of bohemian mavericks and eccentric patrons, arguably besieged by yahoos. (From a provincial distance, that myth retained just enough zing in 1962 to make me drop out of college and drive non-stop from Minnesota to New York. Well, first to a job in Jersey City.) The glamorization of modernism owed much to the aura of Allied triumph in the Second World War, which established so many other parameters of national amity that have lately, and rapidly, been crumbling. Pioneering institutions and, this being America, the charisma of inrushing wealth closed the deal, giving pause even to yahoos. (You might think that a Jackson Pollock was something your kid could do, and that Andy Warhol’s fame was an emperor’s-new-clothes con, but you became less apt to say so in unfamiliar company.) Aggressive innovation remained a punching bag for conservatives, but arguing back was hardly worth the breath. Cosmopolis won, to its own satisfaction and the apathetic disregard of folk at large. After the sensations of Pop art and the jolts of Minimalism, in the sixties, avant-gardist rebellion turned inward with the esoterica of conceptual art and, later, with applications of critical theory, but they served only to shrink rather than to redraw the public profile of new art. A glaring precedent for the Guston affair came about with malice aforethought in 1989, when institutional displays of Robert Mapplethorpe’s (excellent) homoerotic photographs and Andres Serrano’s (puerile) “Piss Christ” set Senator Jesse Helms, of North Carolina, on a spectacular moralistic crusade. The art world soon recovered its obscurity, except for odd blips, until, as emblematized by the trophy aesthetics of Jeff Koons, its values were transmogrified into the news-making prices paid by a speculative international oligarchy of the ultra-rich.
Art goes on. Art that is transgressive will recur. But it will do so nakedly for anyone who chooses to characterize it, not only for those initiates who congratulate one another on their shared investment in standards of truth, beauty, and good conscience. Cold winds are blowing from the future onto aspirations to provide society, or even segments of society, with a capacity to bridge differences with mutual respect. I’ve often reflected that uses of “we” in critical writing are unavoidably presumptuous, though they are rhetorically meant only to invite, or perhaps to seduce, agreement. I’ve never felt less confidence in the pronoun, at a time of alienations that recall what W. B. Yeats perceived in another pandemic year, 1919: “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” ♦


newyorker--2020-10-12--Philosophy in the Shadow of Nazism

Philosophy in the Shadow of Nazism

The defeat of the Central Powers in the First World War gave rise to one of these historic bursts of creative thinking .
Ludwig Wittgenstein , perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century , served in the war as an artillery officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army .
Captured just days before the Armistice , in November , 1918 , he spent nine months as a prisoner of war in Italy before returning home to Vienna , an imperial capital suddenly stranded in a small , parochial new state .
It was while on leave in the summer of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Logico-Philosophicus , ” which was published in 1921 .
Today , it is Wittgenstein ’ s later work that commands the most attention , but the “ Tractatus ” —a brief , dense book that , like Euclid ’ s treatise on geometry , takes the form of a series of numbered propositions—magnetized readers from the start with its radical ambition .
It aimed to tear Western philosophy up by the roots , just as revolutionaries on the left and the right were doing to societies all across postwar Europe .
For Wittgenstein @ @ @ @ @ @ @ begin with language .
Since the Greeks , Western thinkers had tried to understand the world using terms such as “ being ” and “ becoming , ” “ substance ” and “ essence , ” “ real ” and “ ideal.
” But these abstractions gave rise to complicated arguments that went around and around , never reaching any definite conclusion .
Now , in the early twentieth century , relativity and quantum theory were redrawing the map of reality in ways that could be verified by experiment and given precise mathematical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ physics , did philosophy still need to bother with metaphysics ?
By declaring the answer to be no , Wittgenstein set modern thought on a new course .
For the analytic philosophy he helped inspire , many of the discipline ’ s traditional problems are actually just misunderstandings , based on an erroneous use of language .
What philosophers need isn ’ t profundity but clarity : as Wittgenstein says in the “ Tractatus , ” “ Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly .
Everything that can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way of thinking about language—what it means , what it can grasp , and how it should be used—became the particular obsession of the Vienna Circle , a group of scientists , mathematicians , and philosophers who met regularly from the mid-nineteen-twenties to the mid-thirties , mainly at the Mathematics Institute of the University of Vienna .
The best known of its dozen or so core members are the logician Rudolf Carnap , the sociologist Otto Neurath , the mathematician Kurt Gödel , and Moritz Schlick , who turned to philosophy after earning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the pioneer of quantum theory .
These thinkers and their students helped set the agenda for postwar academic philosophy in Britain and America , where most of the Circle ’ s members ended up teaching after they fled the Continent in the thirties .
Taking its cue from the “ Tractatus , ” the Vienna Circle sought to make language as precise and rigorous as a mathematical proof .
The English philosopher A. J. Ayer , who studied in Vienna and helped popularize the Circle ’ s ideas , summed up its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ to dispel those confusions which arise from our imperfect understanding of certain types of sentence in our language.
” If this “ linguistic turn , ” as it came to be known , sounded uninspiring or even priggish , so much the better ; philosophy had been led astray for too long by grand , seductive illusions .
Wittgenstein never attended a meeting of the Vienna Circle , but he knew its key figures , and his ideas dominated its proceedings .
In Edmonds ’ s book , too , Wittgenstein ends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he played the role of genius so perfectly—intense and charismatic , unworldly and unpredictable , shockingly arrogant yet capable of remarkable self-sacrifice .
It didn ’ t hurt that he was also handsome and rich , having been born into one of Austria-Hungary ’ s leading industrial dynasties .
In 1919 , however , Wittgenstein gave up his share of the family fortune .
He spent the next seven years teaching elementary school in remote Austrian villages , where he made himself loathed by regularly beating his pupils and pulling their hair .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the capital , he made contact with the Vienna Circle , whose members had been studying the “ Tractatus.
” The wife of Schlick , the group ’ s leader , recalled that the first time her husband dined with Wittgenstein he returned “ in an ecstatic state.
” Another philosopher , Friedrich Waismann , “ began , subconsciously , to imitate Wittgenstein ’ s speaking patterns.
” Edmonds ’ s subtitle , “ The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle , ” suggests a closer connection between the group ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book actually establishes .
Schlick ’ s death had nothing to do with his ideas ; he was killed by a psychotic former student , Johann Nelböck , who had been stalking and threatening him for years and finally shot him , in June , 1936 , on the steps of a university building .
But what happened next , Edmonds shows , was indeed shaped by what the Vienna Circle had come to represent in the ideological frenzy of interwar Austria .
No sooner had news of the crime broken than the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and even to praise it as a blow against degenerate Jewish thought .
Schlick was accused of damaging “ the fine porcelain of the national character ” and of embodying Jewish “ logicality , mathematicality , [ and ] formalism , ” qualities inimical to “ a Christian German state.
” One writer urged that the murder should “ quicken efforts to find a truly satisfactory solution of the Jewish Question.
” Nelböck , at his trial , played to this sentiment , claiming that he had killed Schlick for ideological reasons .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of jail , but after Nazi Germany annexed Austria , in 1938 , Nelböck was released , on the ground that his crime had been inspired by “ strong national motives and explicit anti-Semitism.
” In this deranged atmosphere , no one was deterred by the fact that Schlick was not Jewish but , rather , a German Protestant .
Some of his defamers probably didn ’ t know this , but others simply didn ’ t care , since in their eyes Jewishness wasn ’ t defined only by religion or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , characterized by the modernism and liberalism they saw as sources of spiritual corruption .
In this sense , Nazis and Austria ’ s Christian fascists were right to see the Vienna Circle as an enemy .
In Edmonds ’ s words , the Circle was “ contemptuous of superstitious thinking , ” including myths about race and religion .
The group included Christians and Jews , but its members ’ real creed was what they called “ the scientific conception of the world.
” That was the title of a 1929 manifesto @ @ @ @ @ @ @ program .
Written as a tribute to Schlick , who was returning to Vienna after a stint at Stanford University , the essay explained that the members of the Circle , though they didn ’ t agree on everything , were committed to two basic principles .
First , “ there is knowledge only from experience , which rests on what is immediately given .
This sets the limits for the content of legitimate science.
” Second , “ the scientific world-conception is marked by application of a certain method , namely logical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the new school of thought its name , logical empiricism .
For logical empiricists , philosophy doesn ’ t deal with ideas or things ; it deals with statements , sentences , propositions .
By putting together a series of true statements , it ’ s possible to create what Wittgenstein , in the “ Tractatus , ” called a “ model of reality , ” a representation of the world in language .
The content of statements about the world is determined by experience , including the refined and controlled type of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Philosophy ’ s role in the search for truth is to examine the form of our statements , to insure that they are syntactically and logically correct .
To this end , the Vienna Circle drew on the symbolic logic developed by the English philosopher Bertrand Russell , which offered a way to reduce any sentence to a series of symbols and formulas .
Many pages of Carnap ’ s 1934 book , “ The Logical Syntax of Language , ” look as if they could have come from a math textbook .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ t be proved true or false , because they are constructed in a way that violates the rules of language .
Carnap labelled these “ pseudo-statements ” — “ a sequence of words [ that ] looks like a statement at first glance , ” but whose syntax or vocabulary renders it meaningless .
He gave as an example “ Caesar is and ” : if someone said this to you , you wouldn ’ t say that she was right or wrong , just that she didn ’ t know English syntax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best hunting ground for pseudo-statements was metaphysics , the branch of philosophy that deals with fundamental concepts like being and essence , time and space .
Since Aristotle , who called it “ first philosophy , ” metaphysics had been seen as the highest and most disinterested form of thought .
For Immanuel Kant , it was “ the queen of all the sciences.
” But , for the members of the Vienna Circle , metaphysics was a queen like Marie Antoinette—imperious , out of touch , and ripe for the guillotine .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ they are generally unverifiable , which to the logical empiricists meant they are meaningless .
In Carnap ’ s 1932 essay “ The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language , ” he asks us to imagine a man who invents a new adjective , “ teavy , ” and who , when we ask him how to tell whether or not something is teavy , replies that “ there are no empirical signs of teavyness.
” In that case , Carnap says , “ we would deny the legitimacy of using @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he argues , should apply to metaphysical terms , from Plato ’ s “ Idea ” to Kant ’ s “ thing-in-itself.
” Such impressive words may provoke “ associated images and feelings , ” Carnap writes , but they have no actual meaning , so any explanation that relies on them is saying nothing at all .
Metaphysics wasn ’ t just a ghost from the past to be exorcised ; it was still on the march , with important consequences for both philosophy and politics .
Carnap ’ s essay was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the other great German-language philosopher to emerge after the First World War .
If Wittgenstein ’ s “ Tractatus ” is a fundamental work of analytic philosophy , Heidegger ’ s 1927 book , “ Being and Time , ” is equally important for “ Continental ” philosophy—a catchall term used by the Anglo-American analytic school to refer to all those benighted Europeans who still take metaphysics seriously .

Philosophy’s role in the search for truth is to examine the form of our statements, to insure that they are syntactically and logically correct. To this end, the Vienna Circle drew on the symbolic logic developed by the English philosopher Bertrand Russell, which offered a way to reduce any sentence to a series of symbols and formulas. Many pages of Carnap’s 1934 book, “The Logical Syntax of Language,” look as if they could have come from a math textbook.
Symbolic logic is useful because statements can go wrong in ways that ordinary usage makes it hard to detect. In most cases, determining whether a statement is empirically true or false is fairly straightforward. If someone says that the moon is made of green cheese, there are various ways to check: you could look at the moon through a telescope, or examine a moon rock, or calculate how a moon-size ball of green cheese would behave in outer space. Even if false, “The moon is made of green cheese” is still a meaningful proposition, because it makes an assertion about the world that can be tested.
Some statements, however, can’t be proved true or false, because they are constructed in a way that violates the rules of language. Carnap labelled these “pseudo-statements”—“a sequence of words [that] looks like a statement at first glance,” but whose syntax or vocabulary renders it meaningless. He gave as an example “Caesar is and”: if someone said this to you, you wouldn’t say that she was right or wrong, just that she didn’t know English syntax.
For the Vienna Circle, the best hunting ground for pseudo-statements was metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that deals with fundamental concepts like being and essence, time and space. Since Aristotle, who called it “first philosophy,” metaphysics had been seen as the highest and most disinterested form of thought. For Immanuel Kant, it was “the queen of all the sciences.” But, for the members of the Vienna Circle, metaphysics was a queen like Marie Antoinette—imperious, out of touch, and ripe for the guillotine.
The problem with metaphysical statements is that they are generally unverifiable, which to the logical empiricists meant they are meaningless. In Carnap’s 1932 essay “The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language,” he asks us to imagine a man who invents a new adjective, “teavy,” and who, when we ask him how to tell whether or not something is teavy, replies that “there are no empirical signs of teavyness.” In that case, Carnap says, “we would deny the legitimacy of using this word.”
The same principle, he argues, should apply to metaphysical terms, from Plato’s “Idea” to Kant’s “thing-in-itself.” Such impressive words may provoke “associated images and feelings,” Carnap writes, but they have no actual meaning, so any explanation that relies on them is saying nothing at all.
Metaphysics wasn’t just a ghost from the past to be exorcised; it was still on the march, with important consequences for both philosophy and politics. Carnap’s essay was written as an attack on Martin Heidegger, the other great German-language philosopher to emerge after the First World War. If Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus” is a fundamental work of analytic philosophy, Heidegger’s 1927 book, “Being and Time,” is equally important for “Continental” philosophy—a catchall term used by the Anglo-American analytic school to refer to all those benighted Europeans who still take metaphysics seriously.
Heidegger and Wittgenstein shared an ability to inspire awe and devotion, but in most respects the two were opposites. Wittgenstein was raised in privilege in Vienna; Heidegger grew up poor in Messkirch, a small town in rural Germany, where his father was the sexton of the Catholic church. Wittgenstein was a wanderer who moved back and forth between Austria and England, and between academia and other pursuits; Heidegger spent his entire career at the German university where he had been a student, and did his thinking in a remote cabin he built in the Black Forest. (That cabin, the most famous dwelling in twentieth-century philosophy, is the subject of its own book, “Heidegger’s Hut,” by Adam Sharr.)
Above all, the two men differed in their opinion of the value of metaphysics. In 1929, the year that the Vienna Circle published its manifesto, Heidegger delivered a lecture whose title, “What Is Metaphysics?,” was a red rag waved in the face of the logical empiricists. Indeed, he began by acknowledging that modern science has no use for metaphysics. According to the scientific conception of the world, only things we can experience directly are real; the domain of knowledge is “beings themselves—and nothing besides.”
The second part of that statement, he argues, far from being a throwaway phrase, reveals a fundamental truth: in addition to beings, there is the nothing. We come to understand the nothing not through reason but through the experience of anxiety; in moments of existential angst, “beings as a whole slip away, so that just the nothing crowds round.” It is only because we encounter the nothing in this primal way that we are able to understand logical concepts like negation and nonexistence. As Heidegger puts it, “das Nichts selbst nichtet”—a strange phrase that English translators have rendered as “the nothing itself nihilates,” or even “the nothing itself noths.”
For Heidegger’s many admirers, his dislocation of language gave metaphysical concepts back the power and strangeness they had lost over the millennia. The way he roots philosophy in mood, rather than in mere intellection, makes his work imaginatively engaging in ways that logical empiricism can’t achieve. One might say that Heidegger wanted to make philosophy more like poetry, whereas the Vienna Circle wanted it to be more like math. For Carnap, the poetic dimension of Heidegger’s thought was precisely the issue, since it depended on misusing language to create an illusion of profundity. The problem, he writes in “The Elimination of Metaphysics,” is grammatical: because German (like English) treats the word “nothing” as a noun, it can be used as the subject of a sentence. For instance, if someone asks, “What is outside?,” you might reply, “Nothing is outside,” just as you could say, “Rain is outside.” This creates the illusion that “nothing” is an entity like rain, whose properties and actions can be described. Syntactically, “The nothing reveals itself” seems to be the same kind of statement as “The rain falls down.”
This is exactly the kind of error we need logic to rescue us from. When we say “Nothing is outside,” Carnap argues, we’re using a kind of verbal shorthand; what we really mean is “There does not exist anything which is outside.” Phrasing it this way shows that the word “not” can properly be used only to negate a proposition. Using it as the subject of a proposition, as Heidegger does, is at best a sign of mental confusion, and at worst a deliberate attempt to mystify and mislead.
Indeed, in “What Is Metaphysics?,” Heidegger explicitly says that he wants to get rid of logical thinking, so that “the very idea of ‘logic’ dissolves in the whirl of a more basic questioning.” This was the fundamental disagreement that separated Heidegger from the Vienna Circle: he believed that language could discover truths deeper than logic; the Circle believed that language without logic could yield only nonsense. As Wittgenstein warned in the last sentence of the “Tractatus,” “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Whereof the Vienna Circle could speak, however, it had a lot to say. Its 1929 manifesto gave rise to a new journal, a series of conferences to bring together leaders in various scientific fields, and an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, which aimed to summarize all of scientific knowledge in two hundred volumes. Still more broadly, the manifesto announced that logical empiricism entailed a particular approach to “questions of life”: “Endeavors toward a new organization of economic and social relations, toward the unification of mankind, toward a reform of school and education, all show an inner link with the scientific world-conception; it appears that these endeavors are welcomed and regarded with sympathy by the members of the Circle, some of whom indeed actively further them.”
That was certainly true of Otto Neurath, one of the main authors of the manifesto and the most vivid personality in the Circle. Neurath, a committed leftist who had participated in the failed revolution in Munich in 1919, was an adept publicist of ideas. He was the one who named the group, hoping, in the words of a fellow member, Philipp Frank, to evoke “other things on the pleasant side of life,” such as Viennese waltzes. When he wasn’t philosophizing, Neurath worked on public housing, adult-education programs, and a new method of representing data in easily comprehensible pictograms, known as Isotype, which resulted in the visual vocabulary now used in infographics throughout the world.
But not everyone in the Circle was happy to be dragged into political debates—including Schlick, whom the manifesto was intended to honor. Edmonds brings to life the volatile political and cultural scene in nineteen-twenties Austria, a small country created after the First World War out of the German-speaking lands of the former Habsburg Empire. Vienna, a city of two million people, had been the right size for the capital of a far-flung multinational state, but now it found itself in a country of just 6.5 million people.
“Red Vienna,” as it was nicknamed, had a socialist government, a cosmopolitan culture, and a large Jewish population. All three aspects made it thoroughly hated by the rest of the country, which was rural, conservative, and Catholic. Austria came to the brink of civil war in the twenties, and in 1933 it became a fascist dictatorship under the rule of the Fatherland Front. In these circumstances, the Vienna Circle had much to lose from becoming publicly identified with the left.
In 1934, the group came under scrutiny from the police, prompting Schlick to write letters to state agencies insisting that it was “absolutely unpolitical.” The letters didn’t help; the Circle’s official sponsoring organization was dissolved, and some members were forced out of their jobs or arrested. Though the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany was still four years away, the members of the Circle began to look for opportunities to emigrate.
Many ended up in America, where they helped shape the next generation of academic philosophers. Herbert Feigl went to the University of Iowa in 1931; Carnap was hired by the University of Chicago in 1936. Kurt Gödel, famous for his “incompleteness theorem” and his complete unworldliness, didn’t wake up to the danger until the Second World War began. After receiving a job offer from the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, in January, 1940, he had to go the long way around, crossing the entire Soviet Union, the Pacific Ocean, and the United States to get to New Jersey.
For the lesser-known members of the group, things were tougher. Edmonds documents the struggles of Rose Rand, a Jewish woman who earned her doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1938 but couldn’t find a secure academic job in England, forcing her to rely on the grudging charity of émigré organizations. Wittgenstein intervened on her behalf, but even he found her demanding and difficult to deal with. Still, she survived, living and teaching until 1980. Remarkably, no one from the Circle was killed by the Nazis.
Meanwhile, as the logical empiricists fled for their lives, Heidegger was on the rise. After Hitler’s takeover in Germany, in 1933, the philosopher was appointed rector of the University of Freiburg and given the responsibility of bringing it into alignment with Nazism. An enthusiastic Nazi, Heidegger saw his task in metaphysical terms, declaring in his inaugural address that the essence of science is “the questioning standing of one’s ground in the midst of the constantly self-concealing totality of what is.” Carnap would have scoffed at this language; but as the Vienna Circle knew, and Germany and the world were about to find out, pseudo-statements can have very real consequences. ♦