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Amy Knight:
The Russian Crime of the Century

March 21, 2019 / Volume LXVI, Number 5

JAMES
McAULEY:
WHO ARE
THE YELLOW VESTS?

Wole Soyinka and

Henry Louis Gates Jr.
A CONVERSATION

Clair Wills on Anna Burns

Claire Messud on Valeria Luiselli

Kaiser Wilhelm
Jill Abramson
Oscar Wilde
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Allowed to
Grow Old
Portraits of Elderly Animals
from Farm Sanctuaries
Isa Leshko
With a Foreword by Sy Montgomery and Essays by
Gene Baur and Anne Wilkes Tucker
“It is a pleasure to see these elderly cous-
ins of ours, rheumy-eyed, bewhiskered,
unsteady on their feet, enjoying their
twilight years in peace, security, and
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Pick Up the Pieces
Excursions in Seventies Music
John Corbett
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Funny and irreverent, he’s voyaged
across the stars and the human imagina-
tion to bring us music both ‘pathetic and
sublime’ from that most misunderstood
of decades, the 1970s.”—Rainn Wilson
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Conspiracies of
Conspiracies
How Delusions Have Overrun
America
Thomas Milan Konda
“The theories he weighs and finds
wanting are fascinating in their perver-
sity, from chemtrails to climate change
deniers. A book that deserves wide circu-
lation and consideration”
—Kirkus Reviews
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A Decent Life
Morality for the Rest of Us
Todd May
“Particularly in its discussion of our
relations with political opponents, this
book is a timely, illuminating, and
inspiring work of moral philosophy.”
—Jeff McMahan, University of Oxford  tive, rich, engaging, and a lot of fun to
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Wherever the
Sound Takes You
Heroics and Heartbreak in
Music Making
David Rowell
“A wide-ranging exploration of the hold
that music has on so many of us. . . .
Every story concerns music, but the
heart of each are people.”—Kirkus Reviews
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Aristotle’s Art of
Rhetoric
Translated and with an Interpretive Essay by
Robert C. Bartlett
“Bartlett’s singularly accurate, readable,
and elegant translation of Aristotle’s
Art of Rhetoric renders accessible to
contemporary students and scholars this
much-neglected foundational text of po-
litical philosophy.”—Peter Ahrensdorf,
Davidson College
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Georg Forster
Voyager, Naturalist, Revolutionary
Jürgen Goldstein
Translated by Anne Janusch
“Goldstein explores Forster’s experience
of life and the ambivalent relationship
between nature and philosophy. He
shows Forster as more than a ship-
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ful thinker who was as bold as he was
stoic.”—Die Zeit
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Battle in the
Mind Fields
John A. Goldsmith and
Bernard Laks
“I don’t think there is any other work in
the mind sciences that compares to the
depth and breadth of this one. Battle
in the Mind Fields is highly informa-
read.”—Ida Toivonen, Carleton
University  
Cloth $45.00
 

 





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Contents
4 Clair Wills Milkman and two other books by Anna Burns

MEMBERS
8 Justin Quinn Poem
10 Sanford Schwartz John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum,
New York City, October 30, 2018–February 24, 2019

ONLY
Catalog of the exhibition by Diana Nawi with David Boxer, Olive Senior, and Nicole Smythe-Johnson
12 Fintan O’Toole Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics
by Chris Christie
Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House by Cliff Sims
16 Kathleen Ossip Poem
18 Michael Hofmann Never Look Away a film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
22 Jerome Groopman An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives
by Matt Richtel
The Beautiful Cure: The Revolution in Immunology and What It Means for Your Health
by Daniel M. Davis
26 Nathaniel Rich The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965–2005 by Zachary Leader
29 Ruth Bernard Yeazell Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement an exhibition at
the Vero Beach Museum of Art, February 9–May 5, 2019
Catalog of the exhibition by Martin Ellis, Victoria Osborne, and Tim Barringer
Christina Rossetti: Poetry in Art edited by Susan Owens and Nicholas Tromans
32 Wole Soyinka and ‘There’s One Humanity or There Isn’t’: A Conversation
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
35 Isabel V. Hull The Trial of the Kaiser by William A. Schabas
37 Jonathan Zimmerman Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side by Eve L. Ewing
A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago Since the 1960s
by Elizabeth Todd-Breland
How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s
Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education by Arne Duncan
’63 Boycott a film by Gordon Quinn
40 Geoffrey Wheatcroft The Happy Prince a film by Rupert Everett
Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis M A R K W. M O F F E T T
42 Thomas Nagel Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals by Christine M. Korsgaard
44 Paul Starr Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts by Jill Abramson
Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics THE HUMAN
by Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts
49
51
Robert Irwin Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain by Brian A. Catlos
Amy Knight The February 2015 Assassination of Boris Nemtsov and the Flawed Trial of His Alleged Killers:
SWARM
An Exploration of Russia’s “Crime of the 21st Century” by John B. Dunlop How Our Societies Arise,
Nemtsov a documentary film by Vladimir V. Kara-Murza
The Man Who Was Too Free a documentary film by Vera Krichevskaya Thrive, and Fall
54 Claire Messud Lost Children Archive and four other books by Valeria Luiselli
58 James McAuley Twilight of the Elites: Prosperity, the Periphery, and the Future of France by Christophe Guilluy
62 253 Signatories An Open Letter to Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk
62 Letters from Erica Jong and Elaine Blair
“This highly readable
book is ambitious in its
CONTRIBUTORS interdisciplinary breadth,
JEROME GROOPMAN is the Recanati Professor of Medicine at JUSTIN QUINN’s most recent collection of poetry is Early House. He
Harvard Medical School, Chief of Experimental Medicine at the Beth teaches at the University of West Bohemia in the Czech Republic. rigorous in its science, and
Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and a staff writer at The New Yorker. NATHANIEL RICH’s latest novel is King Zeno. His next book, Losing
He is the coauthor, with Pamela Hartzband, of Your Medical Mind: Earth: A Recent History, will be published in April. deeply thought-provoking
How to Decide What Is Right for You.
SANFORD SCHWARTZ is the author of Christen Købke and William in its implications.”
MICHAEL HOFMANN is a poet and translator from the German. Nicholson.
His latest translation is of Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, and
his new book of poems, One Lark, One Horse, will be published in the
WOLE SOYINKA is a Nigerian poet, playwright, novelist, and essay-
ist. He received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature. HENRY LOUIS
—R O B E R T S A P O L S K Y ,
US in July. He teaches at the University of Florida. GATES JR. is the Alfonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor and Direc- A U T H O R O F B E H AV E
ISABEL V. HULL recently retired as the John Stambaugh Professor tor of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research
of History at Cornell. Her books include The Entourage of Kaiser Wil- at Harvard. His book Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Suprem-
helm II, 1888–1918 and, most recently, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and acy, and the Rise of Jim Crow and his PBS documentary series Recon-
Making International Law During the Great War. struction: America After the Civil War will both be released in April.
ROBERT IRWIN is the Middle East Editor of the Times Literary PAUL STARR is Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Prince- “A wide-ranging, deeply
ton and author of The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Mod-
Supplement. His recent books include Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Bi-
ern Communications. His next book, Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, interesting analysis of how
ography and Wonders Will Never Cease, a novel.
and the Constitution of Democratic Societies, will be published in May. large numbers of individual
AMY KNIGHT is a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Her most recent GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT’s books include The Controversy
book is Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder. of Zion, The Strange Death of Tory England, and Yo, Blair! His new agents become a society....
JAMES McAULEY is the Paris correspondent for The Washington Post. book, Churchill’s Bust, will be published next year.
CLAIRE MESSUD’s latest novel is The Burning Girl. CLAIR WILLS is King Edward VII Professor of English Literature There is no other book I’ve
at Cambridge. Her latest book, Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant
THOMAS NAGEL is University Professor Emeritus at NYU. He is the History of Post-War Britain, was shortlisted for the 2018 Orwell Prize. read recently that made
author of The View From Nowhere, Mortal Questions, and Mind and
Cosmos, among other books. RUTH BERNARD YEAZELL is Sterling Professor of English at my neurons pop at the
Yale. Her books include Picture Titles: How and Why Western Paint-
KATHLEEN OSSIP’s latest book of poems is The Do-Over. She
teaches at the New School.
ings Acquired Their Names and Art of the Everyday: Dutch Painting rate this book did.”
and the Realist Novel.
FINTAN O’TOOLE is a columnist with The Irish Times and the Leon- JONATHAN ZIMMERMAN is Professor of History of Education at —M A H Z A RIN B A N A JI,
ard L. Milberg Visiting Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton. The Poli- the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book is The Case for
tics of Pain: Postwar England and the Road to Brexit will be published Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools, with A U T H O R O F   B LI N D S P OT
in the US in the fall. Emily Robertson.

Deputy Editor: Michael Shae Founding Editors: Robert B. Silvers (1929–2017)

Senior Editors: Eve Bowen, Gabriel Winslow-Yost, Prudence Crowther,
Julie Just, Andrew Katzenstein
Barbara Epstein (1928–2006)
Publisher: Rea S. Hederman
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Senior Editor, Poetry: Jana Prikryl Associate Publisher: Catherine Tice
Advertising Director: Lara Frohlich Andersen
ideas, many of them
Lucy Jakub, Editorial Assistant; Maya Chung, Editorial Intern; Sylvia Lonergan, Researcher; Katie Jefferis and John Sherman, Type Production; Janet Noble, counterintuitive.... Read this
Cover Production; Kazue Soma Jensen, Production; Maryanne Chaney, Web Production Coordinator; Michael King, Technical Director; Harris Stevens, Advertis-
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— K E V I N K E L LY ,
DAYS OF RAGE
FOUNDER OF WIRED MAGAZINE
» Johanna Fateman: The Power of Andrea Dworkin’s Fury » Aziz Ahmad: The Resurgence of ISIS in Iraq
nybooks.com/daily » Michael A. Cohen: The Political Nihilism of Mitch McConnell » Joe Penney: The Toll on Ferguson’s Activists
Plus: Deborah Solomon on Jasper Johns’s new show, a short story from Panashe Chigumadzi, and more . . . basicbooks.com
The illustration on the cover is by Lucas Adams. The drawing on page 14 is by John Springs. The drawings on pages 35 and 41 are by David Levine. The engraving
on page 43 is by Grandville.
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3

The Unnameable
Milkman
by Anna Burns.
Graywolf, 352 pp., $16.00 (paper)
Little Constructions
by Anna Burns.
London: HarperCollins UK,
296 pp., £8.99 (paper)
No Bones
by Anna Burns.
Norton, 359 pp., $15.95 (paper)
Clair Wills
Early on in Milkman, the Man Booker
Prize–winning novel by Anna Burns,
the narrator (called only
“middle sister”) recalls watch-
ing Rear Window for the first
time. Most of the novel sticks
to events that occurred when
middle sister was eighteen, as
she takes us back to sometime
in the late 1970s, in some part
of Republican-area Belfast.
But her encounter with Rear
Window comes from slightly
earlier, when she was about
twelve:
A little dog gets killed,
strangled, neck broken,
which is not the message
of the film but for me was
the message of the film be-
cause its owner— bereft,
in shock—wails out her
window over all the apart-
ment building, “Which one
of you did it? . . . couldn’t
imagine . . . so low you’d kill
a little helpless friendly . . .
only thing in this whole
neighbourhood who liked
anybody. Did you kill him
because he liked you, just because
he liked you?”
And twelve-year- old middle sister
knows that is indeed exactly why it
happened. The need of a whole neigh-
borhood to murder affection— even a
dog’s affection— makes perfect sense
to her. It is self- defense. She lives “in
a statelet immersed long-term on the
physical and energetic planes in the
dark mental energies; conditioned too,
through years of personal and commu-
nal suffering, personal and communal
history, to be overladen with heaviness
and grief and fear and anger.” In this
environment, unforced affection (and
charity, hope, and love) is out of place,
and therefore threatening. The only
one of the biblical virtues to stand its
ground is faith, and it does so grimly.
Even light struggles, so that the lack of
trust among people is answered by a
physical pall:
It was as if the electric lights were
turned off, always turned off, even
though dusk was over so they should
have been turned on yet nobody
was turning them on and nobody
noticed either, they weren’t on. All
this too, seemed normality which
meant then, that part of normality
here was this constant, unacknowl-
edged struggle to see.
The struggle to see, and to make
sense of what is seen, lies at the heart of
Milkman, and it is a struggle we get to
4 The New York Review
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experience as readers. Kwame Anthony
Appiah, the chair of the Booker Prize
panel of judges, described the experi-
ence of reading it as “challenging”—
like climbing a mountain, but “worth
it because the view is terrific when you
get to the top.” In fact the challenge of
the book is that Burns continually with-
holds vantage points or—to continue
the mountain- climbing metaphor—
orienteering devices from us, including
the most basic device of naming. Ev-
eryone in this nameless part of a name-
less city in a nameless year exists only
in terms of their relationship to some-
one else. Middle sister is in a maybe-
relationship with “maybe-boyfriend”;
Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1965; photograph by Philip Jones Griffiths
she goes running with “third brother-in-
law”; she talks to “longest friend” and
reads bedtime stories to “wee sisters.”
These general appellations are markers
of safety in a community where the last
thing anyone wants is to be singled out.
The closer anyone gets to a proper name
the more dangerous it is, even if it’s only
a nickname: “nuclear boy,” who has
killed himself because of his obsession
with impending nuclear war (clearly a
victim of “Americo-Russo atomic bomb
displacement condition,” given the war
on his doorstep); “the man who didn’t
love anybody,” also known as “real
milkman,” who takes a stand against
the local paramilitaries, also known as
“renouncers- of-the-state”; the “women
with issues” (i.e., feminists).
Best of all the nicknames is “Some-
body McSomebody,” who likes to
pretend he is Somebody in the para-
militaries. Up until the time he assaults
middle sister in the ladies’ restroom of
the local club, McSomebody provides
opportunities for Burns to skewer the
character of the bullying male bore,
desperate to impress. First he tries out
“stalk-talk,” which is mostly violent,
and requires referring to himself in the
first person plural. (“You started this.
You made us look at you. . . . You don’t
know what we’re capable of and when
you least expect it . . . you’ll pay back
for . . .”) And then he has a go at hard-
man bravado. It doesn’t work:
“We can have an off day,” he said,
“with that off day spelling our last
day. The average man, you know,
even the average renouncer,” he
shrugged, “can’t, when it comes to
it, always manage that. We get a
little enervated, a little nervous”—
and here he said my name, my first
name, forename—“because just
beforehand,” he went on, “we have
this feeling that we’re living our
last hours and that there are three
options—we’ll live, we’ll die, we’ll
be injured, we’ll fail, the state will
catch us,” which was five options. I
decided not to cut in to correct, for
that would encourage him on.
In this city of no names it is all
right to be one of “the Johns and the
Marys”— people trying to live civil-
ian lives— because the Johns and the
Marys by definition are not identifiable
as individuals. In effect, proper names,
and even the first person singular, have
lost their function in middle sister’s
world because ordinary civilian life,
insofar as it is achievable at all, is a life
in hiding— at its most extreme, a life
without a self.
And that is middle sister’s problem—
she needs a strategy for how to be, but
to remain invisible, and for how to
find her way around in the dark, but
without seeing. The strategy she has
hit on is “reading while walking.” As
you can tell from her weary encoun-
ter with McSomebody, middle sister is
smart— a joyfully funny and intelligent
guide to her own community and her
entrapment inside it. She is addicted
to eighteenth- and nineteenth- century
fiction— so addicted that she reads
as she walks to and from work, to her
French class, to her dates with maybe-
boyfriend. Initially she appears to be
that familiar, if old-fashioned, figure
of the middle- class girl teen trying out
her identification with Elinor, Mari-
anne, Dorothea, Natasha, Elizabeth,
or Jane. Her obsession with novels of-
fers the reader a welcome respite from
the disorientations of her everyday life.
Books exist, ordinarily, in a world of
proper names, and these names from
the world of fiction seem to promise us
a purchase in middle sister’s world. We
encounter not only Rear Window but
also The Brothers Karamazov, Tris-
tram Shandy, Vanity Fair, and Madame
Bovary. But the relief is shortlived.
Middle sister is not reaching for fiction
as a form of self- discovery but precisely
the opposite— she reads in order to
“stop having a view.”
Her reading, which as she moves on
to Montesquieu, Marlowe, and Chau-
cer becomes more and more advanced
for an eighteen-year- old girl who works
in an office, is as much a protection
against knowledge as a route into it. It
is a way of “blanking out,” or keeping
your mind closed to the world around
you: “This was not schizophrenia. This
was living otherwise. This was under-
neath the trauma and the darkness a
normality trying to happen.” There are
lots of ways of going about normality
in middle sister’s neighborhood, but
they all involve manufactur-
Magnum Photos
ing preoccupation— obsession
with exercise, obsession with
cars and hoarding car-parts,
obsession with the threat of
nuclear war, obsession with
churchgoing. “In those days
then, impossible it was not to
be closed-up because closed-
upness was everywhere.”
What hope for an affectionate
dog in such a place?
The problem of perspective
has long been a challenge for
writing about the Troubles.
Do you stick with a first-
person narrative, risking the
danger of remaining caught
within one of the two warring
sides? Do you try narrative
switching (say, between Prot-
estant and Catholic friends,
as Robert McLiam Wilson
does in his 1996 novel Eureka
Street)? Do you construct an
ambitious, multi-perspectival,
truth-and-reconciliation-type
panorama, as in Owen Mc-
Cafferty’s post- ceasefire play
Scenes from the Big Picture (2003)? Or
do you rely on the outsider?
It is not at all surprising that crime
fiction and thrillers have flourished in
the North in recent years. In a murky
atmosphere distorted by intercom-
munal violence and political corrup-
tion, the exercise of moral authority
and truth-telling, or at least truth-
discovering, must be handed to the
nonaligned detective, the forensic sci-
entist, or the journalist. These figures
can cross borders, such as the peace
walls built to separate the two com-
munities on sectarian lines, and so map
the city and its surroundings for the
reader. Anna Burns gives us no such
guide to help us through the murk. She
has written a novel in which knowledge
is too dangerous to risk, and therefore
the idea of a future to which knowledge
might lead us, or any straightforward
idea of a plot— all the usual building
blocks of fiction—won’t do.
The book that kept coming to mind
while I was reading Milkman was
Seamus Deane’s powerful 1996 novel,
Reading in the Dark, which was short-
listed for the Booker Prize. Deane’s
narrator (also unnamed) is, like middle
sister, a teenage reader in a large fam-
ily that has obscure ties to the Republi-
can movement. Let us call him middle
brother. Middle brother is growing up
in Derry and, like middle sister, he is
persecuted by a half-understood his-
tory of violence and intimidation. His
response is to become an investigator of
his own family’s secrets, and although
 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

L E O D A M R O S C H , The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age “Damrosch [provides] crisp, colorful

\DOH
portraits of its members, illuminated by quotes from their lively, sometimes contentious interactions with each other. . . .
This effervescent history shines a light on the extraordinary origins of a club which still exists to this day.”—Publishers
Weekly, starred review Q “Late-18th-century Britain comes brilliantly alive in a vibrant intellectual history.”—Kirkus
Reviews, starred review
S U S A N C R A W F O R D , Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It “A timely and urgent look at
how America is sacrificing its digital future, productivity, connectivity, social mobility, entrepreneurial growth, education,
and every other public good, thanks to rapacious telcos, scumbag lobbyists, and negligent, cash-hungry politicians. . . .
You should be reading this.”—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

C H R I S T O P H E G U I L L U Y , Twilight of the Elites: Prosperity, the Periphery, and the Future of France, T R A N S L AT E D F R O M
THE FRENCH BY M ALCOL M DEBEVOISE “An indispensable guide to understanding the fears and frustrations of an
increasingly permanent underclass—not just in France, but throughout the world. . . . Disturbing and affecting . . . [Guilluy]
has hit on something profound that extends well beyond the borders of France.”—Jonathan A. Knee, New York Times

C A I L I N O ’ C O N N O R A N D J A M E S O W E N W E AT H E R A L L , The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread “Empowering

and thoroughly researched, this book offers useful contemporary analysis and possible solutions to one of the greatest
threats to democracy.”—Kirkus Reviews

S H I N G - T U N G YA U A N D S T E V E N A D I S , The Shape of a Life: One Mathematician’s Search for the Universe’s Hidden

UHDGV
Geometry “The remarkable story of one of the world’s most accomplished mathematicians, Shing-Tung Yau, who has
made profound contributions in pure mathematics, general relativity, and string theory. Yau’s personal journey. . . inspires
us all with humankind’s irrepressible spirit of discovery.”—Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe

M I C H A E L P . W I N S H I P , Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America

“The rise and fall of
transatlantic puritanism is told through political, theological, and personal conflict in this exceptional history. . . . A clear
narrative tied together with helpful clarifications.”—Publishers Weekly

A D I N A H O F F M A N , Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures“This book makes you wish you’d known the guy,
if only to watch the sparks he threw off.”—John Sayles Q “[A] precise and lively portrait . . . Each phase in Hecht’s
adventures is electrifying . . . Hoffman’s concentrated biography is smartly entertaining and revelatory.”—Booklist, starred
review Q Jewish Lives

S T E P H A N I E E . J O N E S - R O G E R S , They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
“A deeply researched and powerfully argued book that completely overturns romanticized notions of the plantation
mistresses and resistant southern white women.”—Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of
Abolition Q “Nothing less than phenomenal. . . . This is a must read.”—Tera W. Hunter, Professor of African-American
Studies, Princeton University

yalebooks.com

March 21, 2019 5


he learns that the truth most definitely
does not set you free, the novel’s plot
is constructed around that search for
truth. Burns’s genius lies in entirely
renouncing the classic truth- discovery
plot. Detective work— even at its most
Miss Marple, most feminine and unas-
suming—is completely unavailable to
middle sister.
The first reason for this is that while
Deane’s novel was set in the late 1950s
and 1960s, ending with the deployment
of British troops in 1969, Burns sets her
novel a decade later, amid a wholesale
breakdown of civil society. It is not sim-
ply that the population of Northern Ire-
land is divided into us and them, “our
side of the road” and “their side of the
road,” but that the entire urban land-
scape has been eroded by violence and
the threat of violence, whether directed
against loyalist paramilitaries, against
the state, or internally in feuds among
armed Republicans. There is no way of
mapping this city, as Burns shows bril-
liantly by naming the space between
her neighborhood and the city center
“the ten-minute area.” A significant
scene in the novel takes place in the
ten-minute area, but it is nonetheless a
blank, a missing part of the landscape,
given shape only by the time it takes to
cross it.
But the primary reason for middle
sister’s powerlessness is that she is a
girl. Burns insists on the intimate re-
lationship between political violence
and sexual violence, one nourishing
and feeding off the other. A neighbor-
hood under paramilitary control is one
in which women are “befouled” despite
their best efforts to protect themselves.
The stalker’s victim has no comeback.
It is a case of “what females could say
and what they could never say,” what
they could do and what they could
never do.
Middle sister’s troubles start when
she is noticed by Milkman— a proper
name that is not a proper name, in that
it’s not so much a nickname as an un-
derstatement of the power this local
paramilitary wields in the community.
Milkman starts tailing middle sister as
she walks and runs around her neigh-
borhood while reading, and almost
immediately rumors begin to circulate
that she is in a relationship with this
man, who is middle-aged, and mar-
ried, and a murderer. She quickly finds
herself under surveillance not only by
Milkman, who is a far more frightening
and effective stalker than Somebody
McSomebody, but also by the state
(cameras click behind bushes as she
passes), and by her entire community.
And she is powerless to do anything
about it. She is trapped in indirection.
Not only is there nobody to tell, but
“there was still my lack of certainty as
to whether or not there was anything to
tell. That was the way it worked. . . . It
was constant hints, symbolisms, repre-
sentations, metaphors.”
These constant hints and symbolisms
are one source of the novel’s macabre
comedy. There were times reading
Milkman when I thought I would get
a cramp from laughing, but it is hard
to do justice to the book’s humor in a
review because much of it comes from
the sheer length of characters’ speeches
and of grown-up middle sister’s own
free-wheeling, digressive, retrospective
narration. Everybody is continually
searching for another way of saying
6 The New York Review
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something. Since the real is so hard
to name, we continually teeter on the
edge of the surreal. Take middle sister’s
mother, for example— a truly superb
depiction of a harried woman trying
to maintain control in an environment
that is beyond control. Hearing the ru-
mors about middle sister and Milkman,
ma objects not to the murderer bit, and
not even to the middle-aged bit, but
to the married bit. She lectures her
daughter on the Sixth Commandment:
If I really felt I had to cleave to a
renouncer, could I not officially
have gotten myself married to him?
That way I’d be accepted. “Though
goodness knows,” she said,
“being the wife can’t be easy
in itself. All those prison
visits. The tombstone visits.
The being spied upon by the
enemy police, by the soldiers,
by fellow renouncer-wives and
renouncer-comrades of the
husband. Indeed the whole
community would be at it,”
she said. “Making sure of her
fidelity.”
Most of ma’s homilies go on
for pages, and the joy of them
is the number of arguments
she can come up with without
naming anything directly (“the
tombstone visits”). Later she
hears a rumor that middle sister
is pregnant:
“In the name of God!” she
cried. “Are they correct? Is
everybody correct? Have you
been fecundated by him, by
that renouncer, that ‘top of
wanted list’ clever man, the
false milkman?” “What?”
I said, for it had been singu-
lar, that word she’d used and
genuinely for a moment I had
not a clue what she meant
by it. “Imbued by him?” she
elaborated. “Engendered in.
Breeded in. Fertilised, vexed,
embarrassed, sprinkled, caused
to feel regret, wished not to have
happened— dear God, child, do I
have to spell it out?”. . . Next came
abortions and I had to guess them
also, from “vermifuge, pennyroyal,
Satan’s apple, premature expul-
sion, being failed in the course of
coming into being” with any doubt
dispelled by, “Well, daughter, you
can’t disappoint me any more than
you’ve already disappointed me, so
tell me—what did you procure and
which of them drab aunts did you
procure it of?”
What’s exhilarating about reading ma
is that, although we know she would not
use words such as “vermifuge,” by heap-
ing “vermifuge” on top of “do I have
to spell it out?,” Burns gets us right on
board with the shock and disapproval,
even while we are laughing. Its very im-
plausibility gives us a breathless sense
of her desperation. Ma is a three-way
spirit: a caricature (anyone’s Northern
Irish Catholic ma), an explosion of lan-
guage, and a woman utterly herself.
Because of the amount of energy
expended in avoiding naming things,
middle sister’s world is an exhausting
place to live. Increasingly cornered
by the sinister Milkman, and increas-
ingly the subject of gossip, she tries to
deflect the community’s interest in her
by turning herself into a blank, “an
inert, vapid person,” another missing
bit of the landscape. Her predicament,
that of victims of abuse and violence
everywhere, is that she begins to lose
the sense of self she has been trying to
protect by retreating from the world. In
the face of other people’s distrust and
the “push-pull” of suspicion, she finds
herself unraveling: “Thus my feelings
stopped expressing. Then they stopped
existing. . . . I, too, came to find me inac-
cessible.” Burns writes with fearful in-
tensity of the insidious effects of male
abuse of power and control, as middle
sister is rendered helpless, unable to ex-
plain what is happening to her, and—
Anna Burns, London, October 2018
even if she could explain— unable to
get anyone to listen.
The novel is carried by the extraor-
dinary dynamism of middle sister’s
voice, full of syntactically vertiginous
constructions and new coinages such
as “numbance” (for what happens to
you when you are threatened sexually)
or “earbashings” (of McSomebody’s
verbal onslaughts). But all this verbal
energy is a consequence of living in a
time and a place that lacks a language
of feeling. The word “sorry,” for exam-
ple, “nobody yet knew here how to say.”
Ditto “shame”: “I didn’t know shame.
I mean as a word, because as a word,
it hadn’t yet entered the communal vo-
cabulary. Certainly I knew the feeling
of shame and I knew everyone around
me knew that feeling as well.” Burns
writes of the 1970s as a time before psy-
chology, before even the idea of emo-
tional damage or psychological trauma.
Almost, she implies, a time before peo-
ple were prepared to count the human
cost of violence. That is, there is a good
deal of counting in the novel, as num-
bers of girlfriends, guns, body parts,
and dead sons are tallied up. Middle
sister’s neighborhood is addicted to
bizarre reckonings (can ma date again
if she’s had “only one son dead and a
husband, no daughters”?), but it is a
form of accounting that makes people
substitutable for one another. After
all, Burns implies, this is a time before
individuals, when people are given to
talking in the first person plural.
Yet as she keeps reminding us with lit-
tle interjections—“not yet,” “not here,”
“not then”—grown-up middle sister
writes from a post-therapy world. By
switching back and forth between some-
thing resembling an eighteenth-century
language of fiction (not yet fixed into
standard grammar) and a twenty-first
century therapeutic language of self-
expression, she seems to be asking us to
consider the question: What could be
the appropriate vocabulary for feeling
in the face of such violence? But actu-
ally her take on language is more radi-
cal than that. Without an appropriate
language in which to express
Charlie Forgham-Bailey/eyevine/Redux
their feelings, her characters
can’t really feel. Emotions such
as shame or sorrow (or fear,
pity, and compassion) have to
wait until there are words for
them. Like Eliot, Burns’s peo-
ple have “had the experience
but missed the meaning.”
ilkman is Burns’s third M
novel, and in all of them she
takes a backward look into the
past of the Troubles. In No
Bones (2001), her first book,
she is explicit about it, dating
her series of linked short sto-
ries to a succession of historical
moments. We begin on “Thurs-
day, 1969,” when Amelia is in
primary school and violence
erupts. She gets through the
August riots, when Catholics
were burned out of their homes,
by hiding under the table and
playing a game with her sister
of guessing “what’s been blown
up.” We end with “A Peace Pro-
cess, 1994,” when Amelia and
her surviving school-friends
try a disastrous, and hilarious,
day out to Rathlin Island. They
are all reformed alcoholics and
they have all been mutilated by
the Troubles, bearing everything from
kneecapping wounds to the more invis-
ible scars from long incarceration in
prisons and psychiatric wards.
No Bones is a struggle to read, not
because it is not well written, but be-
cause it insists that we look in detail
at the violent horrors of the years be-
tween 1969 and 1994. Everything—
from sixteen-year- old Rab McCormick
killing himself in a game of Russian
roulette because he wanted to “mat-
ter,” to thirteen-year- old Mary Dolan
wheeling her rotting, premature dead
baby (the result of her father’s atten-
tions) in a toy pram, to Amelia’s eat-
ing disorder, her rape, and many many
murders and attempted murders—is
recounted in the same deadpan ever-
so-slightly-ironic tone. The barrier be-
tween fiction and history is so thin in
No Bones that the book feels danger-
ous for the reader. I returned to it after
each break in reading with reluctance,
but not to read on was worse, because it
meant ignoring the fates of Amelia and
her friends, in the way they had been
ignored as children.
And the novel is not without a sense
of hope. It is not, as it is not in Milk-
man, that any of this horror can be re-
deemed. Burns does not believe that
awful experiences make you stronger;
nor does she have any time for a reli-
gious view of suffering. But in all three
of her novels, she does suggest that
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what lies in the future for the trapped
victims of the Troubles is a way of
thinking about feeling. Like the truth,
the language of psychology does not set
you free, but it may give you resources.
Two thirds of the way through No
Bones, Amelia moves to London. It
is the late 1980s, and after a couple of
years she has a breakdown. The break-
down itself is described exquisitely.
She is in a shop in Camden Town and
cannot decide between buying tins of
baked beans or a family-size box of
Special K. Back and forth between the
shelves she goes, frozen in panic, and
all the time eyed by a security guard
“who hadn’t been trained in break-
downs, particularly on how to notice
the little things that triggered the big-
ger things off.” She becomes paralyzed
on the street outside, unable to tell
whether she is in London or back in
Belfast surrounded by the dead of her
childhood; she holds on to the metal
grill fitted against the shop window to
keep herself from falling. I have gone
back to that chapter several times, and
each time I have found myself weeping.
Amelia eventually enters treatment,
and No Bones plots the growth of the
language of psychology alongside the
development of the peace process—
that language ironized as much as
availed of. In Little Constructions
(2007), Burns’s second novel, therapy-
speak is one of the tools of the chatty
narrator, as she keeps trying to get the
reader on her side. “If we’re going to
be mentally healthy, you and me, and
have days of authenticity going on be-
tween us, you’ll need to know . . . ,” for
example. Or, speaking of the matter of
advice-giving:
The great thing since the discovery
of Recovery is not to be seen to be
giving it. It’s no longer appropriate
to interrupt people while they’re
listing their problems and say,
“You should” or “If I were you,”
or “If I was you.” Apparently if
you do this, you show yourself up
as ignorant, anxious, controlling
and old-fashioned. Only in the old
days did people behave like that.
However, none of us likes to be
told we can’t interfere and organ-
ise another person’s life for them,
no matter how evolved into psy-
chological modernity we are. Even
whilst standing back with our calm
bodies and our meditative breaths.
It is true that the narrator’s odd
grammatical interest in whether one
would say “was” or “were” cuts across
the familiar Sunday supplement style,
and asks us to sit up. Nonetheless, the
tone is so utterly out of place in the un-
folding tale of murder, torture, mutila-
tion, and rape (“I use the term ‘rape’
loosely because, technically, he didn’t
rape her. Someone else had raped her.
But he did physically beat her after
dragging her on to the wasteground.
This put her very much into that old
memory of invasion and annihilation”)
that we are forced to ask, what kind of
tone would be in place? The question
is not just how can pain like this be ex-
pressed, but how can healthy talk about
rape keep you safe from harm?
Milkman dispenses with the history
and geography that anchor us in No
Bones and with the knowing narrator
of Little Constructions. Instead our
guide to the insidious violence inflicted
on a young woman who likes reading
old books is an older version of her-
self, who is well versed in what passes
for today’s language of feeling. It is
like triangulation—we get to pinpoint
more precisely, but not because any
one perspective is more valuable than
another. And in the end it may not be
point of view that counts so much as
attitude. Toward the end of the novel,
middle sister herself gets to try out a
bit of Milkmanish surveillance, Rear
Window– style, on maybe-boyfriend
and his friend Chef. There is some-
thing disturbing about the voyeurism
of this tender scene between two young
men. But middle sister does not judge,
and she does not intervene. She simply
reads the scene in front of her, and de-
cides that maybe maybe-boyfriend’s
name should change, to ex-maybe-
boyfriend. The generosity of her in-
terpretation contrasts sharply with the
power dynamics at play in the novel’s
scenes of male surveillance. Middle
sister’s reading is about understanding
relationships between people at ground
level, rather than drinking in the view
from the top of the mountain.
In the end, the message of hope the
novel offers lies in the fact that middle
sister survives, and survives with her
inventiveness and generosity intact.
Recovery means being able to tell the
story in all its varied vocabularies, so it
depends, quite literally, on reading. But
it also depends, explicitly for Burns, on
being able to write from the other side
of violence. All three of her novels are
written from a post- ceasefire perspec-
tive; her narrators have been saved, in
part, by the Good Friday Agreement. It
is impossible to read Milkman without
a sense of incredulity that anyone might
be thinking of endangering that.

WAGON-LIT NIŽBOR
1.
When we were stopped in Lviv, we needed air
and pulled the window down a bit.
A blade of bitter cold slid in; with it
a voice, an old man’s voice: “The children here . . .”
He paused to catch his breath a moment, “They . . .”
But we were off. For hours then all we saw
were fields and fields of luminescent snow.
And we heard nothing further till the day.
5.
In the Exclusion Zone, with curious ease
we sailed across wild meadows in the streets,
past concrete plains arrayed with fallen struts,
their structures open to the lightest breeze.
We’d heard that some came back in the belief
that they’d be better off where it occurred
—the authorities, it seemed, no longer cared—
like shadows moving through an afterlife.

2. 6.
From Ústí up to Dresden, in the night, The populations moving, heavily laden.
what seemed like crowds moved up and down the train, In Kiev and in Warsaw we saw scores
their shuffling syncopated with the din of people, even children, on the squares
the wheels made on the rails. From left to right strewn in the way that sheaves in storms lie down.
the carriages tilted into every slope A sigh gone from each body, they subsided,
along the Elbe’s twisting corridor. gradually nudged and shifted by the stems
Once someone tried the handle of our door, of different weeds, and by the ravening teams
thought better of it and we went back to sleep. of ants and maggots, till their flesh and blood dried out.

3.
Toward evening, the train came to a sudden stop
outside a village called Lesnoye. Silence.
Nothing stirring in the wooded highlands.
The houses and the buildings of the co-op
stockstill—or rather they warped and rusted and tore
at speeds so low their change escaped the eye.
Then we were off—the forest slipping by,
the dwellings moving normally once more.
7.
We pulled the bunks down, spread the sheets across
and passed the bottle back and forth until
the rails rocked us to sleep. We were moving still
when sunlight broke over a field of grass,
a wrecking yard, or stretch of silver lake;
and moving still at speed through smaller towns,
the village stations done in creams and browns,
the red-capped station master’s drowsy look.

4.
There was the time a child joined us a while.
Perhaps he’d lost his parents on the road.
Someone had lifted him out of the crowd
at Košice main station not a mile
behind (we’d seen most of those goings-on,
on the platform hundreds trying to board,
but just in time the carriage doors were barred).
We dozed a little. When we woke he was gone.
8.
We stopped at one called Nižbor toward the evening.
A child spoke to us in the local language.
We gave her sweets. The grass rose to the linkage.
Nearby, at a bar, people were leaving,
loud songs and loud good-byes. When they were gone,
silence but for a dog’s untroubled bark.
The railway tracks stretched off into the dark.
The lights clicked through their signals till the dawn.

—Justin Quinn

8 The New York Review

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Energy Kingdoms
Oil and Political Survival
in the Persian Gulf
JIM KRANE
COLUMBIA “Bravo to Jim Krane for his thoughtful
and well-researched book.”
UNIVERSITY
—James A. Baker,
PRESS sixty-first U.S. secretary of state under
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“A fascinating look at the double-edged

CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU sword that is the Gulf monarchies’
greatest resource.”
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Uneven Moments The Putin System

Reflections on Japan’s Modern History An Opposing View
HARRY HAROOTUNIAN GRIGORY YAVLINSKY
“Each of the essays in this volume “A much-needed insider view from an
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The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism to the Soviet Union (1987–1991)
and author of Reagan and Gorbachev:
“This book is a brilliant summing up of
How the Cold War Ended
[Harootunian’s] prolific career.”

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University of Chicago

Sacred Cesium Ground Confronting Inequality

and Isa’s Deluge How Societies Can Choose Inclusive Growth
Two Novellas of Japan’s 3/11 Disaster JONATHAN D. OSTRY,
KIMURA YŪSUKE PRAKASH LOUNGANI,
AND ANDREW BERG
Translated by Doug Slaymaker
Foreword by Joseph E. Stiglitz
“Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa’s Deluge
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humanity in the face of disaster and
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apathy. Defiant and awake, Kimura’s work
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The Handsome Monk and City Folk and

Other Stories
TSERING DÖNDRUP
Translated by Christopher Peacock
“Positioned along the knife edge of
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modernity and tradition, Tsering
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Country Folk
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Translated by Nora Seligman Favorov
WINNER of the BEST LITERARY
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“A flavorful, thoroughly enjoyable read.”
—The Complete Review

—Carlos Rojas, translator of the Man

Booker International Prize-shortlisted
novel The Four Books by Yan Lianke

March 21, 2019 9


John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night
an exhibition at the Pérez Art
Museum Miami, May 26, 2017–
January 14, 2018; the National Gallery
of Jamaica, Kingston, April 29–July 29,
2018; and the American Folk Art
Museum, New York City,
October 30, 2018–February 24, 2019.
Catalog of the exhibition by Diana
Nawi with David Boxer, Olive Senior,
and Nicole Smythe-Johnson.
Pérez Art Museum Miami/
DelMonico, 224 pp., $45.00
In recent years art gallery and even mu-
seum shows have come to sport titles in
addition to the name of the artist on view.
Many of them are forgettable—they are
flourishes, really—but the subtitle of the
John Dunkley exhibition at the Ameri-
can Folk Art Museum, “Neither Day
nor Night,” precisely captures one of the
most distinctive aspects of his paintings.
Dunkley, who died in 1947 at fifty-six,
was a Jamaican artist who made mostly
landscapes and whose scenes often have
a particular light, which is inseparable
from their ambiguous mood and spirit.
Looking at his modestly sized canvases,
we are often uncertain what time of
day it is, or whether the orb we some-
times see poking out behind trees is the
sun or the moon. Even on the rare oc-
casions when his pictures present a pale
or daytime sky skirting the top edge of
the scene, there is a sense that darkness,
like an atmospheric blanket, is there at
the back and is spreading forward.
The exhibition, which began at the
Pérez Art Museum Miami—the excellent
catalog is in Spanish and English—brings
the American audience its first-ever look
at Dunkley, whose engaging small wood
sculptures, all of the human figure or ani-
mals, are on view along with his paintings.
Dunkley the painter was rarely a creator
of showstopping, immediately memora-
ble images. His pictures, on a quick first
view, seem rather similar, and their pre-
dominantly earthen and brown-white,
and green and green-white, tones, mixed
in with an abundance of black, create an
overall, almost metallic, somberness.
But a little extra time in the company
of Dunkley’s canvases makes one see, to
the great benefit of the work, how inher-
ently abstract, even artificial, these land-
scapes are. They take us less to Jamaica
(or to the island of popular imagination)
than into the mind of someone who
happened to be Jamaican. Dunkley’s
pictures, which generally are not of par-
ticular places in his country, are in many
instances like crosses between little
theater sets and the creations of a land-
scape architect. The painter’s characters,
so to speak, are meaty plants, assertive
leaves, and cumbrous rosettes (or clus-
ters of leaves), which he makes resemble
heads of enormous cauliflowers. There
are tidy stone walls, brand-new-looking
log fences, and strange cut-down trees,
which stick out here and there like base-
ball bats and can strike viewers, we read
in the catalog, as “unabashedly phallic.”
Like his headstrong shrubs, Dunk-
ley’s thrusting tree remnants have more
presence than the occasional person in
his pictures. In the beautiful Going to
Market, we look less at a woman on a
mule than at the marvelously painted
canopy of succulents hanging over her.
The most vivid being in Dunkley’s
10
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Close Up and Far Away
Sanford Schwartz
John Dunkley: Banana Plantation, 29 
 x 17 
 inches, circa 1945
paintings may be a large, pensive rabbit
that has taken a since-I-am-immobile-
you-don’t-see-me pose at the base of Ba-
nana Plantation (circa 1945). Above our
creature is as finely conceived an array
of trees and leaves as the artist devised.
This is a tremendously lovable painting.
Yet just as alive as Dunkley’s spotlit
foregrounds are his deep, dimly illumi-
nated backgrounds. They are marked
by roads or canals— or allées, river
beds, shoreline bluffs, or walkways—
that swerve, or zoom off in straight
lines, into complete darkness. Next to
the stilled and emphatic vegetable life
at center stage, these many routes to
or from somewhere provide a welcome
cursive elegance and sense of move-
ment. We are not sure if they represent
invitations to depart from our garden
world or stand for uncertainties that
our garden world keeps us from facing.
Dunkley’s pictures for the most part
are undated, but a viewer senses that
those with more complicated roadways
or ravines in the background were made
later. They imply an artist going further
into his idea of space. In the undated
and superb Spider’s Web, the many
National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston
long been enough to explain fully who
that artist was, it increasingly speaks, I
believe, for only an aspect of that art-
ist’s makeup. One of the healthier fea-
tures of our current thinking about art
is that we are coming to see all artists,
no matter what their training or the
circumstances of their lives, as needing
primarily to be judged by the ways in
which their work is or is not alive.
Even without our new receptivity
to art from all quarters, much about
Dunkley, such as the indeterminate
way he renders light and space, re-
sists categorization. He left no written
or oral records about anything, but
thanks to the research of David Boxer,
a Jamaican scholar and artist whose
study of Dunkley forms the core of the
catalog, we know a fair amount about
how he operated. Jamaica, in his life-
time, was a “true apartheid’’ society,
which severely limited what headway
Dunkley, who was black, could make.
Though he was not an actively politi-
cal person, he kept abreast of the racial
issues of the day. He was proud of the
achievements of blacks in public life,
and he firmly admired Marcus Garvey
and the black nationalism he espoused.
Boxer, who is a sensitive and con-
vincing describer of artworks, makes
us particularly aware of the lively and
supportive milieu that his subject was
part of. He has combed the pages of the
Daily Gleaner, a Kingston newspaper
that noted Dunkley’s work, and of Life,
with whose images Dunkley was fa-
miliar; and he can refer to the relevant
art books, lectures, and art magazines
that were everyday parts of the life of
the Institute of Jamaica in these years.
It seems to have provided almost a sec-
ond home to the artist. We learn about
Dunkley’s coming into contact with
Henri Rousseau’s primitivism, with
Blake, with the Surrealist trends of the
moment, and with the budding interest
in African sculpture and the idea of a
black consciousness in art.
When Dunkley was starting out as
an artist, his work was met with fer-
vor by Hender Delves Molesworth, an
English art historian who had recently
sweeping paths and lines of fencing in been made head of the institute. It was
the background create such a flowing Molesworth who, in a surprising twist,
yet entangled web of markers and forms urged Jamaican artists, even as they
as to suggest the fantasy prisons envis- were absorbing the European and Af-
aged by Piranesi. If all these routes and rican art coming their way, to become
lines were not enough, Dunkley has aware especially of the power of an-
set in the foreground of his painting an cient Chinese art. Perhaps it was this
elaborate double spider’s web. work that contributed to Dunkley’s
feeling for immeasurable distances.
His sculpture might stand for yet
Dunkley was at work as an artist from another aspect of this artist’s elusive-
the mid-1930s, when he was in his mid- ness, because his wood carvings would
forties, until his untimely death, some ten seem to have little relation to his paint-
years later, from cancer. Prior to that, he ing. Although a few of his sculptures
lived and sought work largely in Central are perfunctory in technique, Dunkley,
America, though the only document we working with such subjects as a glamor-
have about his time away from Jamaica ous woman in heels perched on a stool,
says merely that he was employed for a or street urchins in a cart, or a boxer
year at a banana company in Panama. who is no longer young, was a highly
Back home, he set himself up as a bar- proficient, even stylish handler of his
ber in Kingston, and apparently this is materials. If, like the present writer, you
how he supported himself and his fam- have an affection for intimately sized
ily for the rest of his life. As a painter, representational sculpture in general,
he was essentially self-taught, and he you will be especially happy that these
might be called a naif or a folk art- pieces have come to light. But Dunkley’s
ist. Like other such creators, he often sculpture lacks what his paintings have:
seems to be winging it with his forms or a large, underlying idea. What was that
delineations of space. Yet while label- idea? It might be called an unrelenting,
ing an artist a naif or an outsider has if subtle, need to show uncertainty.
The New York Review
 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS


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March 21, 2019 11


Let Me Finish:
Trump, the Kushners, Bannon,
New Jersey, and the Power of
In-Your- Face Politics
by Chris Christie.
Hachette, 420 pp., $28.00
Team of Vipers:
My 500 Extraordinary Days
in the Trump White House
by Cliff Sims.
St. Martin’s, 360 pp., $29.99
Perhaps the defining moment of the
Trump presidency occurred before
it had even begun, two days after his
election. Since May 2016, Chris Chris-
tie, then governor of New Jersey, had
been head of the transition team plan-
ning for the takeover of power if Trump
won in November. Given the candi-
date’s complete lack of experience in
public office, this process was even
more important than usual. Trump
himself, however, did not think so. In
his self-pitying memoir Let Me Finish,
a title that soon becomes the reader’s
prayer, Christie records that “as far
back as Labor Day,” the prospective
president told him, “Chris, you and I
are so smart, and we’ve known each
other for so long, we could do the whole
transition together if we just leave the
victory party two hours early!” But
Christie plowed on, and two days after
that party, he arrived at Trump Tower
to present a “carefully crafted, thirty-
volume transition plan.” His team of
140 people had spent nearly six months
designing for Trump “an entire federal
government in his image and likeness.”
It included shortlists of pre-vetted can-
didates for all the top jobs in the ad-
ministration, as well as timetables for
action on Trump’s signature policies
and the drafts of executive orders.
What followed seems, on Trump’s
part, gleefully sadistic. Christie was
a big figure in the Trump campaign:
the first serving senior officeholder to
endorse and legitimize his candidacy.
His star had fallen since his stunning
landslide reelection in New Jersey in
2013, but he was still, as the Republi-
can governor of a deep blue state, a fig-
ure of real political substance. He also
imagined that Trump had been a close
personal friend since 2002. Yet when
he arrived at Trump Tower to present
his thirty binders of plans for the new
administration, he was met by Steve
Bannon. Bannon told Christie that he
was being fired with immediate effect,
“and we do not want you to be in the
building anymore.” His painstaking
work was literally trashed: “All thirty
binders were tossed in a Trump Tower
dumpster, never to be seen again.” Are
they, one wonders, now rotting away
gently somewhere in the wastelands of
New Jersey, like the bodies of dispos-
able characters in The Sopranos?
H ow are we to understand this ex-
traordinary episode? Is it an act of
unalloyed personal malice, the emas-
culation of a Trump-lite wannabe by
the real silverback? Or is it a primar-
ily political act, the trashing of the
transition plans as a prelude to the
trashing of government itself under
12
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The King and I
Fintan O’Toole
Trump?1 To ask such questions is to
forget that the one thing Trump shares
with the feminist movement is the be-
lief that the personal is political— and
in his case very much vice versa. Poor
John Adams may have imagined that
he and his fellow American revolution-
aries were founding a government of
laws, not of men, but Trump’s ideal is
a government not even of men, but of a
man— his own unprecedented and as-
tonishing self.
Trump’s declaration in February
of a national emergency to allow him
to build his border wall regardless of
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and New Jersey governor Chris Christie
at a fund- raising event, Lawrenceville, New Jersey, May 2016
the views of Congress was consistent
with his obvious desire for monarchial
powers. The organization of his White
House, as his acolyte and former presi-
dential assistant Cliff Sims describes in
his memoir, Team of Vipers, is not that
of a managerial hierarchy, with clear
lines of responsibility and reporting. It
is that of a royal court in which every-
thing revolves around the person of the
monarch: “The real org chart . . .was
basically Trump in the middle and ev-
eryone he personally knew connected
to him—like a hub and its spokes.” As
Sims puts it, “Everything was personal
to Trump— everything.”
The most pitiful recurring motif in
Christie’s inadvertently comic tale of
self- delusion is the repeated insistence
that he and “my friend Donald” are
personal equals. What he wants us to
believe is that “my unique kinship with
the president” was the mutual regard
of the twin titans of what the subtitle
of his memoir calls “in-your-face poli-
tics.” He himself was “a genuine na-
tional force”; so was Donald. He would,
he strongly implies, have become presi-
dent had Trump not blocked his path.
(He claims, for example, that “if he
hadn’t been there . . . I would have won
New Hampshire,” even though he fin-
ished sixth, with 7 percent of the vote.)
Even after Trump destroyed him in the
primaries and Christie threw in his lot
with his conqueror, the campaign was,
in his eyes, a joint enterprise: “being
his peer was a key part of the role that I
played”; “this was a peer relationship.”
1 a government for Donald.” To organize
See my “Saboteur in Chief,” The New
York Review, December 6, 2018.
In truth, Christie comes across in Let pulsiveness, volatility, capriciousness—
Me Finish more like a naive ingenue and where would Trump be without
being trifled with by a cynical lothario, them? Christie’s plan would have placed
a Cécile to Trump’s Valmont who still, qualified people in senior government
after being cruelly exploited and aban- jobs, where they might have applied ex-
doned, does not understand the nature perience and expertise instead of obey-
of his dangerous liaison. It would, to ing the will of the leader. But it would
inflate Oscar Wilde’s claim about the also have made the presidency predict-
death of Little Nell, take a heart of able: “We had a day-one plan and a
stone not to howl with laughter at some 100-day plan once the administration
of his lines about Trump: “He told me started. We had a 200-day plan after
he loved me.” “We’ve got to be together, that.” This was even more delusional
you and me,” Donald reassures him, than the belief that Donald loved him.
and later, “You know how I feel about Trump cannot function as a dictator—
you.” The lovestruck Chris responds, there are still too many constitutional
and civic constraints on him—but he
Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP /Getty Images
thinks and behaves like one. And this
contradiction of an authoritarian in a
democratic system turns upside down
one of the central qualities of dictator-
ship: the monopoly on predictability.
Eric Hoffer wrote that “when a Stalin or
a Hitler can predict the future because
he has the power to make his predic-
tions come true, the life of the average
man becomes unpredictable. It is with
prediction as it is with wealth: there
is so much of it in a society, and when
one person has most of it there is little
left for others.”2 In a true dictatorship,
the leader owns all the predictability—
while he knows his orders will be car-
ried out, those subject to the orders have
to live in a radically capricious world.
Trump undoubtedly craves those
powers. In his sycophantic but surpris-
ingly astute, well-written, and often
illuminating account of his work on
Trump’s campaign and then in the
White House, Sims sums up Trump’s
“I could help him, and he needed me.” agenda for his second year in office
He is promised diamonds—the vice- as “looking for more opportunities to
presidency and then the office of at- take executive actions wherever he felt
torney general— and eventually settles inclined.” But those inclinations are
for the chairmanship of the Republican too often frustrated. He has the man-
National Committee. When Trump ner and the attitudes of the dictator
sends a minion, Reince Priebus, to tell but not the powers. So he has to turn
him that he’s not getting that either, this particular quality of authoritar-
Christie’s account of his own response ian government on its head. The great
is a full- on teenage flounce: “What- dictators create a monopoly on predict-
ever, I shrugged as Reince practically ability. Trump seeks a more modest
sprinted to Donald’s office.” monopoly on unpredictability.
So, indeed, the trashing of Christie’s Central to Trump’s claim to a mo-
transition plan was personal. It takes a nopoly on unpredictability is his belief
heroic lack of self-awareness on Chris- in the primacy of instinct over intelli-
tie’s part not to see that he functioned gence. In his 1987 best seller The Art
purely as a test of Trump’s absolute of the Deal, written for him by Tony
power— this guy is a two- time governor Schwartz, he insists that
but I can humiliate him time and again
and he will come back for more, still more than anything else, I think
convinced that I really love him. Yet deal-making is an ability you’re
this abusive relationship is also deeply born with. It’s in the genes. I don’t
political. In an authoritarian regime, say that egotistically. It’s not about
Christie’s delusion that he could be being brilliant. It does take a certain
a peer of the Trump realm had to be intelligence, but mostly it’s about in-
crushed. The great leader has no peers. stincts. You can take the smartest
kid at Wharton, the one who gets
straight A’s and has a 170 IQ, and if
The personal and the political meet he doesn’t have the instincts, he’ll
in the quality at the heart of Trump’s never be a successful entrepreneur.
presidency: unpredictability. Christie’s
original sin, the reason why he had to Sarah Sanders was widely mocked
be banished from the Eden of Trump in January when she told the Chris-
Tower and his thirty binders filed in tian Broadcasting Network that God
the dumpster, is that he threatened to “wanted Donald Trump to become
erase Trump’s most precious quality. president, and that’s why he’s there.” But
He had the temerity to think he could she was accurately reflecting her boss’s
make what he calls the “unpredictable self-image, albeit in religious rather
celebrity businessman” into a predict- than pseudobiological terms. Trump
able president: “I could help to organize
2
Reflections on the Human Condition
a government would be to take away im- (Hopewell, 2006), p. 64.
The New York Review
 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

INVENTION
AND DESIGN
EARLY ITALIAN DRAWINGS
AT THE MORGAN
THROUGH MAY 19
Invention and Design: Early Italian Drawings at the Morgan is made possible with generous support from Madison Ave. at 36th St.
the Scholz Family Charitable Trust, the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust,
the Alex Gordon Fund for Exhibitions, and the Andrew W. Mellon Research and Publications Fund. themorgan.org
#MorganLibrary
Giovanni Agostino da Lodi (active ca. 1467–ca. 1524), Head of a Bearded Man in Profile to the Right, ca. 1500, red chalk on paper.
The Morgan Library & Museum, 1973.35:1, Gift of János Scholz. Photography by Janny Chiu, 2018.

March 21, 2019 13


really does believe that the genetic in-
heritance of extraordinary instincts is
what has made so him uniquely quali-
fied to intuit the truth about any subject
on earth. In October 2018 he told the
Associated Press that he understood
climate change because “my uncle was
a great professor at MIT for many years.
Dr. John Trump. And I didn’t talk to
him about this particular subject, but I
have a natural instinct for science.”
This belief in Trump’s own version of
predestination is the fundamental basis
for his presidency. Sims writes that
Trump “operated almost entirely off
of gut instinct” and hence that “no one
knew what he would say, not even the
staff.” He notes his “general lack of in-
terest in the minutiae of . . . pretty much
everything”—instinct does not require
evidence. Peter Navarro, whom Trump
brought into the White House in 2017
as his adviser on trade policy, told Bob
Woodward that the president’s intu-
ition on trade is “always right” and that
the job of the people around him is thus
to “provide the underlying analytics
that confirm his intuition.” Sims uses
a very similar phrase, writing of how
Trump’s chief courtiers “built the intel-
lectual framework that turned Trump’s
raw, gut instincts into actual policy po-
sitions.” He admits that he himself fed
Trump newspaper articles “for one rea-
son only: to tell him he had been right
about something. . . . I’d print it out,
write a little note on it that said, ‘You
were right about this.’” Instinct first,
supporting evidence later.
This is as clear a statement as one
could want of the nature of the admin-
istration, especially as Trump has re-
shaped it over time by ditching those
who did not understand that their job,
first and last, was to confirm the in-
stincts of the infallible leader. They
must practice a sycophancy that is not
just political but biological. When his
physician (and failed nominee as secre-
tary for veterans’ affairs) Ronny Jack-
son announced after Trump’s physical
examination in 2018 that “he has in-
credibly good genes, and it’s just the
way God made him,” he was not merely
engaging in pseudomedical hyperbole.
He was reciting the first article of faith
in the Trump apostle’s creed: Trump is
genetically superior, and this superior-
ity manifests itself in his intuitions.
It does not seem incidental that this
is one of the reasons why religious con-
servatives are so comfortable serving
Trump: sinner though he may be, he is
a source of revealed truth. It is strik-
ing that in both Christie’s and Sims’s
accounts, the emergence of the Ac-
cess Hollywood tape of Trump boast-
ing about sexually assaulting women
is seen as the testing ground for true
loyalty. Both men make much of their
religious faith, Catholic in Christie’s
case, evangelical in Sims’s, and of their
happy marriages. Here, Trump’s true
“instincts” were fully audible—feral,
misogynistic, and adulterous. Yet for
both men there is a pride in having
shown unwavering loyalty to the boss
while others were deserting him.
Christie recounts the episode as
a crisis in which he himself showed a
cool head. There is no moral anxiety.
Sims does wonder about the campaign
surrogates who went on air to speak up
for Trump: “How could people go on
TV, night after night, and defend things
they knew in their heart were indefen-
14
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sible?” Yet he then compares himself to
the persecuted Christians of Egypt and
likens his own loyalty to Trump to the
agonizing compromises they have to
make with their dictatorial president,
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Such moral eva-
sions, he seems to acknowledge, were
“the things I needed to tell myself in
order to keep going on this campaign.”
They were also the things those who
worked for Trump would keep telling
themselves in the White House: that
Trump’s uniqueness places him above
ordinary morality.
T he gut is a tyrant. Intuition is both
inherently unpredictable and, as a basis
for public policy, inherently
anti- democratic. It does not Donald Trump
have to account for itself—
any more than divine inspi-
ration can be questioned by
believers. It is not open to
contradiction because it is
entirely personal—the in-
sight is unique to the presi-
dent. Trump declared in his
acceptance speech at the
Republican convention in
2016, having evoked an
apocalyptic vision of a bro-
ken America, “I alone can fix
it.” This “I” is all gut and no
brain. Everything in govern-
ment must flow from the in-
stincts of the singular leader.
Trump was being entirely
consistent when he spoke of
his admiration for the way
North Korean dictator Kim
Jong-un exerted authority:
“He speaks and his people
sit up at attention. I want my
people to do the same.” If,
as he later claimed, this was
a joke, it was nonetheless a
highly revelatory jest.
It does not matter that Trump’s
oracular speech is hardly delphic. As
Sims puts it, “Trump talked like other
people breathed. It was like a form of
exercise for him— an endless exertion
of words, phrases, asides, and observa-
tions. Sometimes he’d start a sentence
and figure out the point he wanted to
make along the way.” Yet this logor-
rhea is—for himself and his acolytes—
the expression of infallible instincts.
The spontaneous overflow of Trump’s
momentary emotions is the sole source
of America’s salvation. The job of his
underlings is not— as Christie among
others mistakenly thought—to hold
them back or to organize them, but
to channel them. Confirmation bias
in this administration is not an epis-
temological failing. It is the primary
principle of governance: first, confirm
Trump’s biases.
Since he alone can access his infalli-
ble gut, and since instincts are immune
to consistency, Trump’s subordinates
must accommodate themselves to his
unpredictability. In a wartime broad-
cast for the BBC, George Orwell re-
flected on the totalitarianisms of the
1930s and 1940s. He noted that they
differed from the controlling ideolo-
gies of the past precisely in their em-
brace of the idea that infallible truths
can change with the leader’s desires:
The orthodoxies of the past didn’t
change, or at least didn’t change
rapidly. In mediaeval Europe the
Church dictated what you could
believe, but at least it allowed you
to retain the same beliefs from
birth to death. It didn’t tell you
to believe one thing on Monday
and another on Tuesday. . . . In a
sense, [the believer’s] thoughts are
circumscribed, but he passes his
whole life within the same frame-
work of thought. His emotions
aren’t tampered with. Now, with
totalitarianism exactly the oppo-
site is true. The peculiarity of the
totalitarian state is that though it
controls thought, it doesn’t fix it. It
sets up unquestionable dogmas . . .
because it needs absolute obedi-
ence from its subjects, but it can’t
avoid the changes, which are dic-
tated by the needs of power poli-
tics. It declares itself infallible, and
at the same time it attacks the very
concept of objective truth. 3
This is very Trumpian. He replaces
objective truth with subjective truth
but insists that his followers recognize
it nonetheless as objectively infallible.
While his core political program has
now reduced itself to a single item—
build that wall— everything else can
change. The admiring Sims writes that
Trump has “strong opinions, weakly
held.” And this opens the way to the
most pleasing performance of power.
One great mark of power is that, to
your followers, you are equally infalli-
ble when you proclaim opposite truths.
Thus, “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz had his sins
washed clean in October 2018 when
Trump rebaptized him “Beautiful Ted.”
(The new nickname has not stuck.) Or,
in a matter of rather more moment,
Kim Jong-un can be transformed from
the Little Rocket Man on whom Trump
would unleash “fire and fury like the
world has never seen” to “Chairman
Kim” with whom, in his own words, he
“fell in love.” The Trump who threat-
ened apocalyptic war on the Korean
peninsula becomes the heroic peace-
maker of the 2019 State of the Union
address who singlehandedly saved
Korea from the terrible war he himself
had portended. The gut instincts that
told him to rattle his saber then told
him to scatter rose petals at Kim’s feet.
3
The Complete Works of George Or-
well (London: Secker and Warburg,
1998), Vol. 12, p. 504.
And the pleasure in this is that his
followers, like Communists of old des-
perately tacking to the shifting winds
of the Moscow line, must agree that
Trump’s opposites are equally right. If
and when Trump decides that the Chi-
nese are not, as he called them at a rally
in 2011, “motherfuckers” but the great-
est allies the US has ever had, that is
what they will be.
In international relations, predict-
ability is founded on the principle that
treaty obligations assumed under one
regime will not be discarded by its
successor. Trump has overturned this
principle by withdrawing or threaten-
ing to withdraw from the Paris climate
accord, the Trans-Pacific Partner-
ship, UNESCO, the multi-
lateral nuclear accord with
Iran, NAFTA, the Univer-
sal Postal Agreement, the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces Treaty, the Korean–
United States Free Trade
Agreement, and the World
Trade Organization. All in-
ternational treaties are, to
Trump, the equivalents of
Christie’s doomed transi-
tion plan, threats to his mo-
nopoly on unpredictability.
Sims records a conversation
in the Oval Office in which
the president boasted to him
of having made the US even
more unpredictable than
North Korea: “Now they
don’t know what to make
of me. . . . They don’t have
any idea. No one does. And
that’s a good thing. That’s
how it should be.”
The problem for Trump’s
enablers is not just that his
intuitions are innately unpredictable
and that this reduces the governing pro-
cess, in Sims’s description, to holding
“the thin line between controlled chaos
and total anarchy.” It is that Trump’s
real political instincts are not for gov-
erning but for campaigning. In this, he
is surely the first president for whom
the office itself is a let-down, the rather
dreary destination after a thrilling jour-
ney. As Sims astutely notes, “nothing
about being President has ever reached
the high of becoming President.” But
the one high he can still reach is the
buzz of one-way loyalty.
In The Art of the Deal, Trump makes
it clear that by far the highest human
value is personal loyalty. Beyond his
own family, the one individual for
whom he seems to feel something like
love is his mentor, the notorious Roy
Cohn. He acknowledges that, as his
lawyer, Cohn could be brilliant but
“could also be a disaster.” He even ad-
mits, in essence, that Cohn was a crook
who “once told me that he’d spent more
than two thirds of his adult life under
indictment on one charge or another.”
But none of this matters because of
Cohn’s unshakable loyalty to Trump:
Just compare that with all the
hundreds of “respectable” guys
who make careers out of boasting
about their uncompromising integ-
rity but have absolutely no loyalty.
They think only about what’s best
for them and don’t think twice
about stabbing a friend in the back
if the friend becomes a problem.
What I liked most about Roy Cohn
The New York Review
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Robert J. Shiller
A rational voice, relevant worldwide

7 Books 135 Licenses 30 Languages

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Narrative Economics
Robert J. Shiller

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March 21, 2019 15

 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
was that he would do just the oppo-
site. Roy was the sort of guy who’d
be there at your hospital bed, long
+%
after everyone else had bailed out,
literally standing by you to the
death.




Loyalty is, of course, the lowest of
the virtues. It is honor among thieves,
the operating code of every mafia.
Trump evoked it in precisely these
in difficult circumstances. And this is
where Trump’s cultivation of unpredict-
ability finally works against him. When
you are predictably unpredictable, you
are also predictably disloyal. Christie
and Sims are both utterly medieval in
their complaints about how they were
betrayed. Their books are like cahiers
de doléances from the ancien régime, in
which it was permissible to report one’s
sufferings so long as they were blamed
)




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!

terms on December 16 when, after Mi- on the royal advisers, but never, ever on
chael Cohen, Cohn’s rather anemic de- the monarch. Christie was done in by
!
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scendant as consigliere, cut a deal with
prosecutors, he tweeted that “Michael
Jared Kushner, whose father Christie
had put in jail when he was US attor-
Cohen . . . became a ‘Rat.’” In this at ney for New Jersey, but Donald, he be-
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" least we might see a consistency with lieves, still loves him. Sims was undone
the ideals set out in The Art of the Deal: by the jealousies of people around the
uncompromising integrity ranks way former chief of staff John Kelly, but
below “literally standing by you to the he still loves his master. Yet Sims, who
death.” Cohen, like all the other poten- has infinitely more insight than Chris-
tial rats trapped by Robert Mueller’s tie, does realize, when he is eventually
terriers, should honor the code of loy- shafted, that his beloved Trump “hadn’t
alty, take the rap, and keep his mouth lifted a finger for countless loyal aides
shut. But there is a twist. Loyalty is before me, and I’m sure he wouldn’t
supposed to go both ways. As so many for countless loyal aides to come.” One
of his enablers have discovered, Trump would hope that reading these books
demands it but does not return it. would transform any loyal aide into a
The point of loyalty is mutual predict- rat. The consequences might be more
ability. It is an assurance of how another unpredictable than even Trump could
person will behave toward you, even handle.

FINAL
My body has gone.
It doesn’t need me anymore.

It reminds me of myself,
+$


$! 

!$

 " ! "
saying prayers,


 
"
 "

 "" "
!
& "


 
"
'
$! " $
)
% **

sharing old stories.
"
%"$! $
$!%%$
)
% "
$
!'
We are deep in something, with this sharing.
 $!
! $
!%
$
'!
!
!
)

 !
$"

$
% 
!
The wave approaches,

turns, swells.
%"
"

"#%$
$
$

"


"$!
)$
 %$%
 ! (
 !! 

$($
It might cleanse the choices

 
$ $
"
"
""% 
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 ! 
"
$
we are trying to make right.
"
%!&

"$%!
I’m reconceiving everything I knew:
the history of upper New York State,

arsenal town, mill, factory, dock.

It reminds me of my body, gone but real.

We are deep in something.

We all have it so hard right now.

Let me welcome you

to the republic of smiles.

Let me be your founding mother

with your fever on my shoulder:

—What do you feel like eating, dear?

—Nothing really, I just ate.

I’m not offended.

It’s a relief to me too.

How do you reconceive a history?

Can kindness buy peace?

Does the moon still talk to me?

 &*'!!" Only every night.
 &*'!!"
—Kathleen Ossip

16 The New York Review

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March 21, 2019 17


Never Look Away
a film written and directed by
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Never Look Away (Werk ohne Autor in
the original, “work without an author”)
is the third film by the German director
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, fol-
lowing the much-admired Stasi drama
The Lives of Others (which won the 2006
Academy Award for Best Foreign Lan-
guage Film) and the much-reviled The
Tourist of 2010, with Angelina Jolie and
Johnny Depp. It is at one and the same
time a history film covering 1937 to 1968
in East and West Germany, a romance,
and an artist film. Its subject is the self-
finding or the development of
the fictitious German painter
Kurt Barnert, which, to those
who know or care, matches
at very many points the self-
finding and development
of the best-known German
painter and top-selling living
artist worldwide, Gerhard
Richter.
As the film begins, the six-
year-old Barnert (the ador-
able Cai Cohrs) is being taken
around an exhibition of “De-
generate Art” (Expression-
ists, Surrealists, Abstracts,
and Neue Sachlichkeit) in
Dresden by his voluptuous
young aunt Elisabeth (Saskia
Rosendahl). A Nazi curator
pontificates on the evils of this
modern art. They are the first
words of the film: “Moderne
Kunst,” with a big rasping roll
on the “r.” The aunt—who
both feels and feeds an erotic
attraction in her nephew (he
precociously draws her nude),
and in denunciatory times is
strangely indiscreet in her speech (in
the museum, on the bus home, on the
street)—suffers a mental breakdown,
and quite soon is referred to a clinic run
by the gynecologist and eugenicist Pro-
fessor Seeband (the saturnine Sebastian
Koch) to be institutionalized and steril-
ized and ultimately murdered. “Never
look away,” she whispers to him as she
is bundled into a van and driven off; it is
unclear whether or not he can hear her
or read her lips.
A quick self-contained sequence to
music—three minutes, almost like a
pop video—follows, illustrating some
of the disasters of war in February
1945: Dresden is firebombed; Elisa-
beth is gassed along with her cohort
of sterilized women; Kurt’s uncles,
both in the Wehrmacht, are shot in the
course of some vague action on the
Eastern Front; a blameless bus driver
is squashed flat by collapsing masonry.
It’s not clear whether—as with Elisa-
beth’s whispered injunction—Kurt per-
ceives or even learns of any of this, but
the film propounds a sort of osmosis
cum mysticism; its parcels always reach
their intended recipient. It is later what
he will paint out of, though the relation
between loss and creation is not exam-
ined or in the least persuasive.
We next see Kurt, by now in his third
attractive incarnation (this one is the
bland Tom Schilling, a chunky sort of
hunk), in 1948, sitting high up in a tree
overlooking the kempt countryside. As
18
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Art for Film’s Sake
Michael Hofmann
with many things in the film, it is the
type of scene we have seen before, and
to better effect (in Dennis Potter’s The
Singing Detective, for instance). Kurt
experiences some sort of illumination
and comes running full tilt across some
tousling cornfields to tell his parents
about it. The mad enthusiasm of his
aunt seems to have struck the family
again, but no, we are told, his is a more
solid nature. (The artist is mad, but it
all goes into his art. Divine furor rules.)
Kurt enrolls in sign-painting school
and is put to work drawing Communist
banner slogans; he attracts attention
Sebastian Koch as Professor Carl Seeband in Never Look Away
because he forms the letters freehand.
“Why do you do it?” “Because I can,”
he replies, echoing the answer of the
pianist Vladimir Horovitz when asked
why he played a certain sonata so
fast—the answer of genius everywhere.
He transfers to art school and is set to
painting heroic figures of the prole-
tariat. While there, he meets another
Elisabeth. Professor Seeband, the
murderer, effectively, of Kurt’s aunt,
has slipped through the loosely woven
antifascist net, and this is his daughter,
Ellie (Paula Beer), a student of fashion,
who promptly falls in love with our as-
piring painter.
In one of the film’s more bungled
scenes, he leaps naked into a tree out-
side her second-story window to escape
detection when her parents unexpect-
edly return home. It seems odd that
he goes to that trouble only to come
crawling out some minutes later, still
picturesquely naked, at the feet of El-
lie’s mother. Also improbably, he is
accepted as a lodger at the Seebands’
and is gradually, against the father’s
protests—the mother seems to have
liked what she saw—incorporated into
the family. Nevertheless, when Ellie
becomes pregnant, her father, still with
his beady eye on the gene pool, per-
forms the abortion himself, in the fam-
ily home, in the hope that it will destroy
her relationship with Kurt. This is one
of those irrational films that intermit-
tently trail thick clouds of motivation.
Seeband is promoted, and Kurt
paints his official portrait. Then
abruptly the older Seebands quit East
Germany for the West. Strangely, Kurt
and Ellie, now married, seem to suffer
no consequences for this. Things with
Ellie are going swimmingly, with lots of
roly-poly blue-lit sex scenes (what A. O.
Scott in The New York Times sweetly
and accurately called “movie sex”)
speaking for their intimacy; they must
have the parents’ Biedermeier villa
practically to themselves; he is popu-
lar with his fellows, knows how to talk
to the party officials who determine
everything; his career is beginning to
advance (wall paintings of Workers’
Solidarity). Nevertheless, he and Ellie
decide to go west also.
Disregarding advice, he makes for
Düsseldorf, citadel of conceptual art,
where, as he had been warned, no
one paints anymore. The vibe in the
art school could be out of Fame—all
the students are decidedly groovy.
But Barnert is accepted by Antonius
van Verten, who is Gerhard Richter’s
teacher, Joseph Beuys, in everything
but name—the rounded hat kept on all
the time, the waistcoat with the many
pockets that look as though they’re
all full of fishhooks, the story of the
downed plane, the terrible injuries, the
rescue, the work with the sacred mate-
rials, felt and fat. This is the man who
now looks deep into Kurt’s piercing, if
inexpressive, blue eyes and tells him
untruthfully: “Your eyes tell me that
you’ve seen more than any of us.”
And so Kurt starts trying to make
it in the West, imitating all the dated
tricks available to a recently arrived
Ossi: Pollock spatter-paintings, foot-
prints trailed across lengths of paper,
life-size papier-mâché dolls, antlers
dunked in white paint, freehand cir-
cles, slashed canvases. “You learn fast,”
says a friend of Kurt’s: I have no idea if
that’s meant to be true or not. Against
his usual principle, van Verten visits
him in his studio, looks around with his
sad, swimmy eyes, and asks him, “But
who are you? What are you? This is not
you.” When he theatrically doffs his hat
to him as he leaves, we see the scabbed
burns on his scalp. Oliver Masucci,
playing van Verten, playing Beuys, has
a more charismatic presence than all
the others put together. Which is prob-
ably as it should be. Though it still un-
balances the film.
By now, Ellie has suffered a miscar-
riage and believes she won’t be able to
have children. “Your pictures have to be
our children,” she wails. He, as often,
says nothing, shows nothing, looks sol-
emn. At this stage, he doesn’t even have
any pictures for her to mother. He goes to
the studio with his briefcase and spends
many days not raising a paintbrush.
There they are, in the highly competitive,
gimmicky West, with noth-
Caleb Deschanel/Sony Pictures Classics
ing to show for themselves.
It’s all no good. “Painting is
dead,” proclaims Kurt’s stu-
dio neighbor, Harry Preus-
ser, who makes things with
nails, “just like folk dancing
and lace-making and silent
movies.” Kurt in Düsseldorf
is like a cow in a zoo.
Then, quite suddenly, and
by blind good fortune—or
Destiny—things start to
happen. In all innocence—
he has never met the man,
or heard of him, associates
nothing with him—he sees
a tabloid with the mugshot
of his father-in-law’s Nazi
euthanizer boss, Dr. Kroll,
who has just been arrested.
He makes a painting of the
photo, marks it up in a small
grid; and paints it in all
grays. Then blurs it, in the
characteristic Richter way. It
looks suddenly hunted, his-
toric. Kurt had suffered for a long time
from the perceived superior reality of
photography—well, now he has stolen
its clothes.
He picks up other snaps of his wife’s
and his own, projects them onto a can-
vas, and overpaints them in the dark. He
projects a page of passport photographs
of Seeband. Outside a wind gets up—or
genius—and the shutters bang in the
vast vertical space of his studio, causing
the reflection of the Seeland portrait to
appear over another photo-canvas now
on his easel. Idea taken. Soon the faces
of Seeland and Kroll appear in a com-
posite with those of Kurt and his aunt
(he doesn’t yet know their connection).
He doesn’t know it, but it is his own
story, and German history. He paints
the chance composition that results.
Paints it, and blears it with varnish, all in
black and white. His father-in-law, see-
ing the work on a passing visit, concludes
he has been rumbled and (“I have to go.
Thanks. Excuse me”) flees in panic.
At long last, Kurt’s career starts to
move. Ellie becomes pregnant after all,
and he paints her as Nude Descending
a Staircase, with the addition of a little
peachy color, and the unusual addition
of the month as well as the year in the
title of the work. May. Someone notices
a resemblance to Marilyn Monroe;
someone else picks up on the nod to
Marcel Duchamp’s title. There’s a turn-
up or an upturn, pictures and pregnant.
Van Verten, the Beuys figure, silently
The New York Review
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March 21, 2019 19

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approves this new work and invisibly
pulls a few strings. An art-school pal,
formerly a competitor but with the req-
uisite business background, now offers
to represent Kurt.
His first show happens, it is 1966, the
newspapers and television are present.
A wacky press conference in a curious
place called Wuppertal. Some chap
Discover New in a beanie presides. The art journos
are happy to talk him up. Dimly, they
have some appreciation of what is be-
fore them. The artist comes across as a
Books and Ideas shy hippie. He gives sheepish, evasive,
highly satisfactory answers. “It doesn’t
really matter to me who I paint,” he
from the MIT Press
says, talking away the biographical con-
nections; “better if I don’t know them.”
As a result, his pictures are taken to be
random, anonymous, dubbed “work
without an author,” when really what
they are is “works without a truly de-
clared subject.” Suddenly Barnert is
hailed as the leading artist of his gen-
eration, a generation with nothing to
say. “I don’t make statements,” he says,
“I make pictures.” Ellie is there, with
beehive and baby. Next, he has it in
mind to paint (as the protean Richter
in fact did) color charts. “Only reality
is consistent. . . . Everything that’s true
is beautiful.” Fade to black.
At over three hours, the film is long
(I seem to remember The Lives of Oth-
ers dragging a little at the finish) and
is irreproachably, almost tiresomely
handsome to look at. Blue, blue-gray,
off-white, and tan dominate, with oc-
casional little accents like single red
carnations on white tablecloths in a
hall, a pink mohair sweater, yellow rub-
ber gloves hanging over a studio sink.
The cast are all pleasant-looking, and
everyone except Sebastian Koch seems
to have blue eyes. Blue filters are used
to cool some of the exteriors and interi-
ors. Dusk at the bus depot. In bed with
Kurt and Ellie.
The settings and locations are pictur-
esque: a village house, remote, palatial
clinics, and the Seebands’ rambling
villa back East; the Düsseldorf art
school with its fantastically high verti-
cal space and the Barnerts’ garret in
the West. Old buses and cars put on a
good show, crossing a bridge over the
Elbe. The girls get to wear floaty floral
summer frocks (especially Elisabeth in
the beginning), and the men show off
double-breasted suits and work wear of
various kinds: the painters in overalls,
the medics and orderlies in white coats,
and then the inevitable Nazi chic in
brown and black and gray (poor Sebas-
tian Koch plays so many such roles that
I imagine he must sleep in swastika-
patterned pajamas). It is a lush cos-
tume drama and has more in common
with Gone with the Wind than not.
For such a good-looking film, it is
the cameraman Caleb Deschanel who
probably deserves an Oscar (it’s up for
one more). The angles poke up and
down, the lens runs out rapturously to
meet the action, hangs lustfully over
the bodies (“tits without women,” said
one plaintive German review, parody-
RODERICK MACFARQUHAR
Learn More at (1930–2019)
mitpress.mit.edu/nyrb We mourn the death of Roderick MacFarquhar,
a long-standing contributor and friend.
20
ing the original title), runs up the out-
side of the art school building to find
Kurt’s newest work through the open
window. The “painting” that Kurt does
is far and away the most persuasive and
articulate I have seen performed on
film; it is done by a former assistant of
Richter’s.
The script by Donnersmarck, though,
is frontal, unsubtle, and bluff. It is a pity
that to make the Big German Film, the
Big German Director (he is reportedly
six foot nine, wringing wet, because he
also has Big Hair) has made free with
the story—the closely guarded story,
the one only he has—of the Great Liv-
ing German Painter, Gerhard Richter,
who is reported to have regretted his
involvement with the project, and with
Donnersmarck, who is evidently (see
Dana Goodyear’s on-the-fence pro-
file in The New Yorker*) a hard man
to turn down. Reading Richter’s plea
to Donnersmarck to maybe make the
character “another profession, like a
writer or a musician for example” is to
feel deeply sorry for a man who at the
end of his life has unintentionally ex-
posed himself to the greedy practitio-
ner of a different art. Reisserisch was
Richter’s verdict on the trailer, which
is all he cared to see of the thing: pop,
ingratiating, vulgar—and so it is.
One appreciates that the existence of
painting is a sort of unendurable prov-
ocation—sometimes literally, a red
rag—to the cinema, but I don’t know
that any great films have been made
about painters. When watchable ones
result, it is because the painters come
with some scale or eccentricity—as
with Timothy Spall playing Turner not
long ago. Tom Schilling doesn’t have
the magnetism to carry a film—and
quite possibly Richter wouldn’t either.
(Nor should he have to; he’s a painter.)
Just because someone works in what
you might call the visual or visible
industry and makes marks on paper
or cloth (without being inscrutable,
small-scale, and delayed, like a writer)
doesn’t fit him for an action hero, or the
one-man Redemptor-cum-Wirtschafts-
wunder we see here.
Donnersmarck’s film seems to pro-
pose all sorts of equivalences: art and
success, sex and art, trauma and suc-
cess, art and trauma. A painter is an
erotomane is a victim is a persistent
fellow. Good things come to him who
waits. The statements about art—the
title (in both languages), some of the
others quoted already—are an embar-
rassment, the view of success at once
crass and mystical (the wind in the
trees). The first time I saw it, I muttered
to myself, “Oberkitsch.” It is nowhere
an inward film, nowhere a magical film,
only briefly and momentarily a charm-
ing film (at the beginning with the aunt;
Barnert horsing around with some of his
painter friends). In order to give it some
semblance of substance, Donnersmarck
has helped himself shamelessly to the
life and work of Richter, whose anguish
one can all too readily imagine.
*“An Artist’s Life, Refracted in Film,”
The New Yorker, January 21, 2019.
The New York Review
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Joan Miró:
Birth of
the World

Joan Miró. “Hirondelle Amour.” 1933–34. Oil on canvas. Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller.
© 2019 Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

1
moma.org/
spring

March 21, 2019 21


The Body Strikes Back
An Elegant Defense:
The Extraordinary New Science
of the Immune System:
A Tale in Four Lives
by Matt Richtel.
William Morrow, 425 pp., $28.99
The Beautiful Cure:
The Revolution in Immunology
and What It Means for Your Health
by Daniel M. Davis.
University of Chicago Press,
260 pp., $25.00
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine was awarded jointly to James
Allison of MD Anderson Cancer Cen-
ter at the University of Texas at Houston
and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University
for work that “established an entirely
new principle of cancer therapy.” Each
independently discovered that our im-
mune system is restrained from attack-
ing tumors by molecules that function
as “brakes.” Releasing these brakes (or
“brake receptors”) allows our body to
powerfully combat cancer.
This remarkable advance has been
a long time coming. The idea that our
natural defenses could be mobilized
against tumors extends back more
than a century, to the case of a young
woman named Elizabeth Dashiell. In
1890 Dashiell, then seventeen years
old, consulted a Manhattan surgeon,
William Coley, for a painful swollen
hand. After several weeks of conserva-
tive measures, Coley operated on her
hand and found her bones encased by
a sarcoma—a cancer of the connective
tissue. He sought to cure the cancer by
amputating Dashiell’s arm just below
her elbow, but tumors soon appeared in
her neck and abdomen. Several months
later she died at home, with Coley at
her bedside.
Dashiell’s death had a profound emo-
tional impact on the young surgeon. He
began to comb through the records of
New York Hospital, searching for cases
of sarcoma with better outcomes. One
success stood out from the expected
fatalities: Fred Stein, an immigrant
housepainter, had undergone multiple
operations for a sarcoma that had been
rapidly spreading in his neck. His case
was labeled “absolutely hopeless” by
his surgeon. Then Stein developed a
bacterial infection in the region of the
tumor. Antibiotics didn’t exist at the
time, but his own white blood cells were
able to eradicate the bacteria. As they
did, the cancer shrank and ultimately
disappeared.
This stunning outcome prompted
Coley to search for a way to make the
body combat tumors, as Stein’s ap-
parently did. The surgeon initially in-
oculated cancer patients with what he
called “laudable pus,” extracts of bac-
terial abscesses, and then with bacteria
themselves. While Coley documented
occasional instances of tumors shrink-
ing, he never arrived at a reproducible
way to cure cancer by stimulating a pa-
tient’s natural defenses.1
1
For a detailed description of Coley’s
life and work, see Charles Graeber,
The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy
and the Race to Cure Cancer (Twelve,
2018).
22
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Jerome Groopman
Over the ensuing decades, cancer
treatment largely consisted of surgery
to excise tumors, radiation to burn
them, or chemotherapy to poison them.
There were moments, though, when it
seemed that Coley’s dream would be
realized. Researchers studying the im-
mune system discovered the molecules
interferon and interleukin-2; each was
initially hailed as a promising treat-
ment based on their dramatic effects in
shrinking tumors in rodents. But both
failed to have robust and broad benefits
when used to treat cancer in humans.
Killer T cells—part of the body’s immune system—surrounding a cancer cell
Such frustrating setbacks did not
deter James Allison, a young scientist
from the small town of Alice, Texas.
Counseled by mentors to stay away
from studying the relationship between
the immune system and cancer, which
they claimed would be a dead end, Al-
lison rejected their advice.2 He was in-
trigued by a molecule called CTLA-4
that was thought to stimulate immune
cells, but he came to an opposite view:
CTLA-4 was a brake rather than an ac-
celerator. In an elegant series of experi-
ments in mice, he showed that releasing
the CTLA-4 brake allowed the rodent’s
immune system to attack and eradi-
cate tumors. Working independently in
Japan, Tasuku Honjo identified a dif-
ferent molecule, PD -1, and proved that
it too was a brake on immune cells;
once PD -1 was counteracted, the ro-
dent immune system was freed to com-
bat cancers.
In 2004 the first human trials of
agents that released these brakes were
conducted, and were initially declared
failures. When patients receive radia-
tion or chemotherapy, the treatment
is judged successful if tumors shrink
by at least 50 percent in diameter; this
shrinkage occurs within weeks to a
few months. Patients with metastatic
melanoma who received blockers of
CTLA-4 had no significant shrinkage
2
See my “The T-cell Army: Can the
Body’s Immune Response Help Treat
Cancer?,” The New Yorker, April 23,
2012.
after months. The failure seemed to be The work of Allison and Honjo in-
another example of the differences be- spired Matt Richtel to write An Elegant
tween a rodent’s immune system and a Defense. A Pulitzer Prize–winning
human’s. Pfizer, one of the companies journalist at The New York Times,
producing a potential blocker, then he “picked up [his] pen,” hoping for a
abandoned it. happy ending, that the new immune
But clinicians conducting another therapy would save the life of his best
apparently failed trial noticed that buddy from childhood, Jason Green-
many months after treatment with the stein, who had advanced Hodgkin’s
blockers was suspended, the tumors lymphoma. In addition to Greenstein,
either stopped growing or began to Richtel introduces the reader to Mer-
shrink. Instead of assessing efficacy in redith Branscombe, a businesswoman
the short term, as was usual for radia- with lupus; Bob Hoff, a former govern-
tion and chemotherapy, the researchers ment lawyer with HIV whose immune
system suppresses the virus; and Linda
National Institutes of Health
Segre, a golfer with rheumatoid arthri-
tis. Each case poses a fundamental
question in immunology. Why doesn’t
Greenstein’s body recognize his lym-
phoma as dangerous and fight it? What
causes Branscombe’s and Segre’s im-
mune systems to damage their healthy
tissues? How does Hoff naturally con-
tain a pathogen like HIV without the
need for antiviral drugs?
To address these questions, Richtel
first explicates for the lay reader the in-
tricate biology of our immune system.
He explains how important immune
cells—T cells, macrophages, and den-
dritic cells—distinguish endogenous
entities from foreign ones, and how
pathogens trigger the immune cells into
a defensive response. He also explains
how our antibodies are made by B cells,
a process involving the reshuffling of
DNA, and highlights recent findings on
the microbiome, the bacteria in our gut
that coexist with our immune system.
He succeeds in this formidable task
using colloquial prose with touches of
humor. While the word “immunity”
connotes defense, Richtel writes:
measured patient survival over a period
of years. In 2010 the study results were The war metaphor is misleading,
presented at a major cancer meeting: incomplete—even arguably dead
a quarter of the patients treated with wrong. Your immune system isn’t
blockers for widespread melanoma a war machine. It’s a peacekeeping
were alive after two years; their pre- force that more than anything else
dicted survival had been a mere seven seeks to create harmony. . . . This is
months. not just because we don’t want to
One of the most stunning successes hurt our own tissue. It is also be-
of this treatment is the case of Presi- cause we need many of the alien
dent Jimmy Carter. In the summer of organisms that live on and in us,
2015 he was diagnosed with melanoma including the billions of bacteria
that had spread to his liver and brain. that live in our guts. . . .
With standard radiation and chemo- But what specifically does the
therapy his prognosis was dismal, mea- microbiome help with?
sured in weeks to a few months. Carter Digestion, nutrition, obesity—
received a new PD -1 blocker and re- broadly, how much energy we take
mains in remission nearly four years from foods and how effectively we
later. Metastatic melanoma has proved squeeze nutrients from them.
to be one among several previously in-
tractable cancers that has yielded to These commensal microbes, Richtel
immune therapy. Clinical trials in lung continues, do not threaten us but serve
cancer, Hodgkins lymphoma, bladder as essential allies. By unnecessarily
cancer, Merkel cell carcinoma, and eradicating them with excessive use of
others have shown dramatic remissions antibiotics or antibacterial soaps, “we
and raised the prospect of some pa- risk impairing bacteria that contribute
tients being cured. In general, a quar- to the effectiveness of our immune sys-
ter to a third of treated patients react tem’s function.” This is the so-called
positively. hygiene hypothesis, which argues that
The advent of successful immune excessive efforts at cleanliness may,
therapy for cancer comes with a price. ironically, weaken our defenses and in-
It often causes toxic side effects, as the crease our risk for allergic and autoim-
unleashed immune system attacks not mune disorders.
only the tumor but normal tissues as In contrast to the bacteria of the
well. Patients can suffer intense inflam- microbiome are pathogenic microbes.
mation of the bowels, skin, and thyroid When they try to invade us,
and adrenal glands. Then there is the
cost of the treatments, typically more immune cells show up in force and
than $100,000 per year. devour the infection. Some im-
The New York Review
 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

mune cells blow themselves up in
the process. Others nip off parts of
the infection and carry them away
to be assessed in a defense hub
called a lymph node. There, the
bits of infection are shared with
swarms of passing defenders called
T cells and B cells. These are the
immune system’s most advanced
fighters; they are, in fact, two of
the most effective biological struc-
tures in the world. What makes T
cells and B cells so remarkable is
that they are extremely specific.
Each one of the billions of them
in your body is tailored through
a quirk of genetics to recognize a
very specific infection. Once a T
cell or B cell finds its evil mate,
its infection doppelgänger, it can
set in motion a powerful defense,
following hard on the innate reac-
tion, bringing defenders trained
specifically to bounce out this par-
ticular antigen.
The conundrum posed by cancer—
why can tumors with characteristics
distinct from healthy tissues evade the
immune system’s surveillance?—is an-
swered by Richtel, who draws on Hon-
jo’s and Allison’s research:
The last few decades of immunol-
ogy . . . have taught us [that] the
immune system . . . can be duped.
Sometimes a disease takes root
and starts to grow and spread and
then tricks the immune system into
thinking it isn’t so bad after all. It
deceives the entire defense system
into helping it grow. This is what
happened to Jason.
turned red. . . . She withdrew her
left hand from her shirt, and put
the pair of them side by side. Now
it was more glaring, her left hand
white and a touch puffy, which
reflected the regular inflamma-
tion, her right hand red and visibly
swollen.
“My immune system,” she said,
“is always attacking me.”
Linda Segre’s autoimmune disorder,
rheumatoid arthritis, is marked by pro-
found pain and swelling with destruc-
tion of her joints. Of the genesis of her
malady, Richtel writes:
The clues to and the catalyst of her
illness were actually there all along
to be discovered if given proper
scrutiny. In addition to her fam-
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This list of possible causes should the most enduring and effective kill-
come with a prominent caveat, as the ing techniques in the pantheon of
reason why most people develop auto- disease.” Richtel places our new un-
immune disorders is still obscure. As derstanding of the immune system “on
for Bob Hoff, despite intensive study par with the greatest human achieve-
of his immune system at the NIH, pre- ments” and quotes an immunologist at
cisely how his body prevents HIV from UCLA asserting that recent discover-
behaving in its typical destructive way ies are “as significant as the discovery
remains a mystery. of antibiotics.”
His enthusiasm reflects that of other
writers on the immune system. Books
W hile successfully communicat- on the subject are often marketed with
ing the science of Allison and Honjo the promise that we can fine-tune our
and related clinical advances to a lay defenses by adopting a specific life-
reader, Richtel occasionally lapses style, such as daily meditation, a diet
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Delving deeply into this phenomenon,

Richtel interviews oncologists who
elaborate that cancer cells can look like
healthy ones:

Part of the way that Hodgkin’s

and other cancers disguise them-
selves is by tricking the T cells that
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March 21, 2019 23

 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
precisely measured hours of sleep.
Daniel Davis, a professor of immunol-
ogy at the University of Manchester in
The Tale of Genji
the UK, is refreshingly sober in assess-
ing such popular notions in The Beauti-
ful Cure:
A JAPANESE CLASSIC
ILLUMINATED All kinds of stresses have been
linked with diminished immune
responses, from burnout at work
to unemployment. . . . Well over a
hundred clinical studies have re-
ported that stress can contribute
to poor health, which leads many
to suppose that a super-charged
lifestyle perhaps increases our risk
of all kinds of illnesses, from auto-
immune disease to cancer. The
topic remains controversial, how-
ever, because so many factors af-
fect our ability to fight disease that
it is difficult to assess the effect of
any one.
Rather than accept stress as a dis-
tinct cause of immune system impair-
ment, Davis rightly cautions us not
to “explore the relationship between
stress and health, without the added
complication of stressed individuals
being more likely to exercise less, sleep
poorly, drink alcohol or smoke.” The
same caveats hold for the alleged sa-
lubrious effects on immunity of mind-
fulness and exercise: “There is good
evidence that t’ai chi can help improve
pain and physical mobility for elderly
arthritis patients. Whether or not t’ai
chi impacts the immune system, how-
ever, is controversial.”
Davis emphasizes that most pub-
lished reports on the effects of lifestyle
changes on the immune system are
methodologically flawed: they involve
small numbers of subjects, not selected
randomly and without an appropri-
ate control group. Davis quotes from
a review of sixteen clinical trials: “Be-
cause of methodological flaws in exist-
ing studies, further vigorously designed
large-scale placebo-controlled, ran-
domized trials are needed.” He warns
against “exaggerating the positive ef-
fects of mindfulness meditation on
immune system dynamics until these
effects are further replicated and addi-
tional studies are performed.”
While Davis enthusiastically ap-
plauds the landmark discoveries of
Allison and Honjo, he also offers an
intelligent and insightful analysis of the
field’s unknowns:
This is still only a beginning. We
now know of over twenty other
brake receptors in the immune
system. Most of these switch off
Through June 16 metmuseum.org Catalogue available specific types of immune cell:
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC Natural Killer cells, macrophages,
The exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and dendritic cells, T cells, B cells or
The Japan Foundation, with the cooperation of the Tokyo National Museum others. We must now test, in aca-
and Ishiyamadera Temple.
demic labs and companies large
and small, whether or not antibod-
ies that block these receptors, in-
It is made possible by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke dividually or in combination, will
Foundation Fund, 2015; the Estate of Brooke Astor; the E. Rhodes and unleash immune cells to tackle dif-
Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; and Ann M. Spruill and Daniel H. Cantwell.
ferent types of cancer.
The catalogue is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation;
the Florence and Herbert Irving Fund; the Charles A. Greenfield Fund;
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation; the Mary Livingston Griggs
Furthermore, Davis writes that we are
and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation Fund, 2015; the Parnassus Foundation; unable to predict which types of cancer
and Richard and Geneva Hofheimer Memorial Fund. will be most affected by releasing the
Tosa Mitsuoki, Portrait-Icon of Murasaki Shikibu (detail), Edo Period (1615–1868), brakes on a particular type of immune
17th century. Ishiyamadera Temple, Shiga Prefecture. Courtesy of Ishiyamadera Temple. cell. The system, he avers, “is too com-
Photo by Kanai Morio.
plex and our understanding too slight.”
In that regard, there is a pressing
need to “personalize” the use of cur-
24
rent CTLA-4 and PD -1 blockers, given
their toxic side effects. The goal is to
select patients most likely to benefit
and spare those who won’t. Davis imag-
ines identifying
which brake receptors are present
at the surface of a person’s im-
mune cells. This would allow us
to select a[n]. . . inhibitor that tar-
gets those particular receptors. A
person’s tumour can also be anal-
ysed to determine whether or not
it contains the protein molecules
that trigger particular brake recep-
tors on immune cells. This could,
in principle, predict whether or not
blocking the PD -1 brake system,
for example, is likely to benefit a
patient.
As straightforward as this seems, Davis
states that “this has not proved to be so
easy.” He explains:
First, the brakes are dynamic;
knowing what is keeping the im-
mune system in check one day
might not reflect the situation the
next day. Also, things can change
as a result of treatment; as one
brake comes off thanks to a[n]. . .
inhibitor, a tumour may adapt to
exploit another brake system.
In addition, there is biological vari-
ability among cancer cells even within
an individual patient:
A single tumour is sometimes said
to be not a single disease but over
a million different ones, with each
of its millions of cancer cells being
slightly different. . . . We don’t yet
know which molecules on a per-
son’s cancer are the best to target,
we don’t yet know whether or not
every cancer cell would have to
possess the same signature, we
don’t yet know how to limit the
possibility of healthy bystander
cells being attacked, causing un-
wanted side effects.
Importantly, Davis does not ignore
the economics of these novel immune
therapies:
It would be deceptive—dishon-
est—to write about new medicines
without mentioning the financial
problems that stand in our way:
we sorely need new international
institutes and different ways of
funding medical research and
medicines, where the well-being of
humanity, and other life on earth,
is paramount and financial profit
irrelevant. I hope this is the brave
new world that awaits us.
This is an honorable hope but realis-
tically elusive, as societies struggle to
incentivize the high-risk endeavor of
developing breakthrough treatments,
with their high rate of failure, while
containing unregulated greed when
success occurs.
The research honored by the 2018
Nobel Prize is a historic advance that
already has restored the lives of many
with cancer. But sadly, Davis notes,
there are still large gaps in our knowl-
edge of how to optimally unleash the
immune system. After treatment with
a PD -1 blocker, Jason Greenstein’s lym-
phoma shrank, but then rapidly grew
again, ending his life.
The New York Review
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March 21, 2019 25

The Life of Saul Bellow:
Love and Strife, 1965–2005
by Zachary Leader.
Knopf, 767 pp., $40.00
“Guys, I’m rich.”
So begins the second volume of
Zachary Leader’s Life of Saul Bellow,
and so begins the second half of Bel-
low’s life. The publication of Herzog in
1964 had elevated a respected if under-
selling midcareer novelist to the status
of publishing darling, national celeb-
rity, golden-fingertipped literary divin-
ity. Bellow’s income that year was the
equivalent in today’s dollars of approx-
imately $1 million. It was higher
each of the next three years. He
began to turn down lucrative
awards and lecture fees to avoid
the tax liability. “The earlier Saul
had disappeared,” said his friend
Mitzi McClosky, referring to the
Saul who was tyrannized by his
father and the financial success
of his businessmen brothers, the
Saul who hustled to secure time
for his work amid low advances,
grants, and teaching gigs, the
Saul aggrieved by being pigeon-
holed as a “Jewish writer.” The
new Saul had made it, all right.
But he was no less besieged. If
the great enemy of the writer was,
as he often put it in speeches and
essays, the “frantic distraction”
that intruded on “the quiet of
the soul that art demands,” that
enemy now came swarming over
the barricades.
It came in the form of family
members hawking investment
schemes in Miami real estate and
Oklahoma oilfields; grifting accoun-
tants; literary agents touting stock tips;
divorce lawyers (his third divorce, out
of an eventual four, may have set the
record for the most expensive in Illi-
nois history); academic and literary in-
stitutions offering positions and prizes
and other compensated entanglements;
writers hoisting protest letters; invita-
tions to judge the Booker Prize, the
MacArthur “genius” award, and the
Miss USA Beauty Pageant; and a new
class of professional admirers (“career
parasites,” he called them) who sought
his mentorship, founded the Saul Bel-
low Journal, and proposed writing his
biography. There were also the girl-
friends, mistresses, and wives—and
with them, the three sons, though these
were more easily evaded (Bellow’s pa-
rental strategy, in the words of Adam
Bellow, was “benign neglect until their
minds had matured enough to be some-
what interesting”). But the incursion
that most acutely tested Bellow came
from the “great public noise”: the con-
vulsive debates over race, war, gender,
and inner- city crime that dominated
American life in the decades following
Herzog’s publication. Bellow reigned
as the nation’s preeminent novelist
during much of this time, a station that
forced him, again and again, to con-
front the paradox that lay at the heart
of his identity as a writer.
“It excites me, it distresses me to be
so immersed,” wrote Bellow during
this period. He was referring to a re-
porting trip to Jerusalem, but he might
have been describing his new position
26
РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
Swiveling Man
Nathaniel Rich
in American culture: insisting on the
writer’s need for independence from
worldly affairs while throwing himself
into them. Bellow was much closer to
F. Scott Fitzgerald than Thomas Pyn-
chon on the novelist-sociability scale.
He joined boards, political commit-
tees, and neighborhood study groups.
He developed an international reputa-
tion as a charmer at dinner parties; a
predilection for alligator shoes, Savile
Row fedoras, camel-hair overcoats,
and bespoke suits in wool and shan-
tung (“a king’s haberdashery would
not have surpassed his wardrobe,” says
the writer Dana Gioia, who met him in
Saul Bellow, Brattleboro, Vermont, June 1989; photograph by Dominique Nabokov
1976 as a graduate student); and a wide,
ever-growing circle of friends with
whom he took pains to keep in touch.
His hostility to distraction was more
figurative than literal. His working day
ran from nine until noon or one, but it
was not inviolable; Alexandra, his wife
from Humboldt’s Gift to More Die of
Heartbreak, an accomplished math-
ematician who required total isolation
in order to work, reports with aston-
ishment that when the phone rang, he
“engaged in these very lively conversa-
tions, and then he’d go back to work
with just as much energy and zest as be-
fore.” The afternoons left him plenty of
time for his abundant correspondence
(see Benjamin Taylor’s Saul Bellow:
Letters), long walks, and his academic
responsibilities, which he assumed with
an enthusiasm that far outpaced finan-
cial need or professional obligation.
He taught university literature semi-
nars for nearly his entire adult life. Be-
tween 1962 and 1993 he served on the
Committee on Social Thought at the
University of Chicago, the august in-
terdisciplinary graduate program that
championed a wide reading of the fun-
damental works of Western thought.
In 1970, at the height of his fame, he
agreed to chair the committee, re-
cruiting new appointments, quarreling
with deans over bureaucratic demands,
managing tensions between professors,
and evaluating the academic achieve-
ments of art historians, philosophers,
and political theorists—grueling, often
dull work that might have cost him a
novel’s worth of labor.
He came close to writing books about
Hubert Humphrey and Robert Ken-
nedy, and he wrote letters to the editor
and published articles in the Chicago
Sun-Times about student protests and
the Johnson administration. He also
attacked authors who wrote about “po-
litical campaigns, wars, assassinations,
youth movements” instead of “private
feelings, personal loyalties, love.” One
thinks of Moses Herzog, swiveling in
consecutive lines from Tolstoy (“to be
free is to be released from historical
limitation”) to Hegel (“the essence of
human life [is] to be derived from his-
tory”). Bellow swiveled in just this way
between engagement and disengage-
ment, from jealous isolation to cocktail
hour, morning to afternoon and back
again.
If novelists have some responsibility This would be, in retrospect, a quaint
to write about the political crises of
their day, what is the appropriate reg-
ister? And what form should such writ-
ing take? Bellow didn’t think highly of
journalism. When Albert Corde in The
Dean’s December is praised for being “a
journalist of unusual talent,” he replies,
“Don’t you believe it. There is no such
thing. That’s just the way journalists
pump, promote, gild and bedizen them-
selves, and build up their profession,
which is basically a bad profession.” But
Bellow was a dogged, deeply perceptive
journalist, and for decades returned to
the form when he wished to write about
matters of urgent public interest. A
family connection in Israel was struck
by his reporting style: “He listened not
only to the story, but beyond that: he
listened with all his senses, to body lan-
guage, to intonation, noticing all details
thoroughly and in depth.”
The reported pieces in It All Adds
Up, a collection of Bellow’s nonfiction
reissued last year by Penguin Classics,
flash with such sensual detail. A Spanish
commandante in postwar Madrid, “lean,
correct, compressed, and rancorous,”
carries a black-market white loaf “under
his arm like a swagger stick” (“Spanish
Letter,” 1948); the bloated Egyptian
dead in the streets of Sinai “resemble
balloon figures in a parade” (“Israel:
The Six-Day War,” 1967); the skyscrap-
ers of downtown Chicago are “armored
like Eisenstein’s Teutonic knights star-
ing over the ice of no-man’s-land at
Alexander Nevsky” (“Chicago: The
City That Was, the City That Is,” 1983).
In his nonfiction Bellow was often po-
litical. But he was rarely polemical.
This got him in trouble. The more fu-
rious the political debate, the less tol-
erance for nuance, uncertainty, moral
complexity. As his fame grew, Bellow
came under increasing pressures to
take a stand on the issues of the day.
But he refused to be an activist, a re-
fusal that was as artistically heroic as it
was personally disastrous.
Dominique Nabokov
In 1965 he defied more than
a dozen of the nations’ leading
writers to attend a White House
Festival of the Arts, after Rob-
ert Lowell had denounced the
event in a letter sent to The New
York Times. “Every serious art-
ist,” wrote Lowell, “knows that he
cannot enjoy public celebrations
without making subtle public
commitments.” Bellow disagreed.
Despite publishing letters in the
Times and the Chicago Sun-
Times condemning the Johnson
administration’s policies in Viet-
nam, he saw no reason to follow
Lowell’s example. “The President
intends, in his own way, to en-
courage American artists,” said
Bellow. “I consider this event to
be an official function, not a po-
litical occasion which demands
agreement with Mr. Johnson on
all policies of his administration.”
He later called his decision to at-
tend “foolish,” given the uproar,
which made the possibility of a digni-
fied ceremony impossible—an expres-
sion not so much of regret as disgust for
the showmanship of the other writers.
prelude to the attacks Bellow would
receive for To Jerusalem and Back, a
portrait of Israel drawn from report-
age, memoir, and, in the spirit of the
Committee on Social Thought, a deep
reading of philosophy, history, and lit-
erature, mixing his own observations
with those of Stendhal and Sinyavsky
and Sartre. “Perhaps to remain a poet
in such circumstances is also to reach
the heart of politics,” wrote Bellow,
explaining his method. “Then human
feelings, human experience, the human
form and face, recover their proper
place—the foreground.” He used the
novelist’s devices of analogy, descrip-
tion, and deep questioning, always
being careful to avoid the imperatives
of activist writing. This enraged par-
tisans and close observers of Israel.
The Jerusalem Post attacked him for
mimicking “Arab and left-wing propa-
ganda against the State of Israel”; for
Noam Chomsky, Leader writes, “Bel-
low’s book might have been written by
the Israeli Information Ministry.” Both
camps held Bellow guilty of humaniz-
ing the enemy.
“The Chicago Book,” as Bellovian
scholars now refer to it, was to be a
work of nonfiction in the mode of To
Jerusalem and Back but was never
completed. Bellow instead harvested
The New York Review

the draft for use in lectures, essays,
and The Dean’s December, in which
the university dean Albert Corde in-
vites personal and professional trouble
by publishing in Harper’s two essays
about the city’s criminal justice system
and inner- city crime. The resentment
stirred up by the articles—“Liberals
found him reactionary. Conservatives
called him crazy”—is the same Bellow
anticipated he would receive should
he publish the Chicago Book, and that
he did receive when he let loose about
Chicago in interviews and speeches.
Leader gives an agonizing account
of Bellow’s two Jefferson lectures in
1977, sponsored by the National En-
dowment for the Humanities. Bellow
delivered the second, more tenden-
tious lecture in the Gold Coast Room
of the Drake Hotel, before an audience
of museum donors, university bigwigs,
and arts club members. Insulting these
paragons of American prosperity
from the start, Bellow spoke of a feel-
ing that “this miraculously successful
country has done evil under the Sun,
has spoiled and contaminated nature,
waged cruel wars, failed in its obliga-
tions to its weaker citizens.” The au-
dience also failed to be charmed by
Bellow’s insinuation that wealthy Chi-
cagoans were complicit in their city’s
deterioration, immured in their Lake
Shore Drive high-rises, in “strange iso-
lation” from the reality of the streets
below or, worse, had escaped to the
suburbs, from which wafted the “dank
and depressing odors of cultural mil-
dew.” The hometown Nobel laureate
was greeted with “muted applause”
and largely ignored at the cocktail
reception.
 

  
 

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The response was not quite as deco-
rous from students and faculty (“Bel-
low: False and Racist?” was the title
of a protest letter in The Chicago Ma-
roon, the University of Chicago student
paper), who were shocked by Bellow’s
depiction of neighborhoods that in his
youth were inhabited by immigrants
who “improved themselves and moved
upward” and that now he described as
dystopic, third-world, savage. In the
inner- city schools, “76 percent black
and Puerto Rican,” the children “are
like little Kaspar Hausers—blank, un-
formed, they live convulsively, in tur-
bulence and darkness of mind. . . . But
they are unlike poor innocent Kaspar
in that they have a demonic knowledge
of sexual acts, guns, drugs, and of vices,
which are not vices here.” A similar up-
roar followed the publication of The
Dean’s December. It did not help that
Bellow, in his defense, explained that he
was speaking up “for the black under-
class and telling the whites they’re not
approaching the problem correctly.” A
novel intended as a protest against “the
dehumanization of the blacks in big cit-
ies” furthered the dehumanization.
Leader points out that racial injustice
had been a dominant theme for Bellow
since the beginning of his career. In the
fragment “Acatla” (1940), an interra-
cial couple is victimized by prejudice,
and Bellow’s first completed novel, The
Very Dark Trees (1942), was about a
white man who wakes up black (after
selling it to a publisher Bellow threw
the only copy into a furnace). In essays
written in the 1950s Bellow attacked
depictions of black primitivism, later
espoused most flagrantly by Norman
Mailer in “The White Negro,” as dan-
gerous, provoking “envious rage and
murder,” and he supported the Con-
gress of Racial Equality, for which he
wrote the preface to a book to be titled
“They Shall Overcome.” The essay at-
tacked the rural white poor, whom he
held responsible for much of the na-
tion’s racial animosity and violence.
“Rural America has had a long history
of overvaluation,” he wrote, thanks to
the mistaken notion that
everyone was better and sounder
on the farm, in the woods and hills,
less anomic, more self-reliant,
fairer, more American. This is sim-
ply not so. In provincial America,
North no less than South, lives the
most unhappy, troubled and alien-
ated portion of the population. . . .
The glamor of Confederacy and
insurrection, of “tradition” and
“gentility” has been laid in poster
colors over provincial pride, back-
wardness, xenophobia and rage.
Such bona fides would win Bellow no
public mercy, however, and his political
statements brought increasing scorn
in his final decades. What Adam Bel-
low called his “irreverent attitude to-
ward reigning intellectual authorities”
had been responsible for his singular
voice—vernacular scrambled with el-
evated, crude with transcendent, Hum-
boldt Park with Hyde Park. Carried
into the political sphere, the same im-
pulse translated into a lifelong aversion
to ideological factions, with their en-
forced orthodoxies, slogans, and pub-
lic mantras—any group in which “the
emphasis falls on collective experience
and not upon individual vision.” He
would lecture his sons: “Don’t disap-
point me, don’t be one of those people
who just line up.” Bellow’s antipathy to
just lining up derived from his view of
what literature should be, and by exten-
sion, how artists should direct their en-
ergies, and it tended to overwhelm any
political beliefs he held.
Broadly speaking, he was a young
Trotskyite who migrated, in stages, to a
fuddy- duddy conservativism. But even
the slightest scrutiny revealed inconsis-
tencies that would alienate any natural
ally—what he called his “obstinacy to
mark my disagreement with all par-
ties,” and what Leader sees, more dec-
orously, as a compulsion “to wound, to
force his listeners and readers to face
what they have chosen not to face.”
The force of Bellow’s opposition to the
Vietnam War and US nuclear policy
was matched by his opposition to the
civil disobedience of their youthful
protesters. If Bellow was so antiwar,
an earlier biographer wondered, “why
then was he embattled with anti-war
people when they met?” Bellow voted
for Adlai Stevenson but hated “Ste-
venson people,” which Leader trans-
lates as “liberals interested in political
personalities and electoral politics.”
He ridiculed women’s liberationists
and hippies but supported George
McGovern against Richard Nixon in
1972. In the 1970s and 1980s he joined
a series of conservative foreign policy
groups, only to resign from each in
turn when they issued statements in
his name with which he vehemently
disagreed.
His reputation as a conservative grew
after a 1988 New York Times Magazine
 
         

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March 21, 2019 27
 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
NEW FROM
The Privileged Poor
How Elite Colleges Are
Failing Disadvantaged Students
Anthony Abraham Jack
“The Privileged Poor is three books
in one: an engrossing personal
memoir, a collection of rigorous
scholarship, and a powerful
manifesto for a new movement to
improve the lives of low-income
students at elite universities.
It’s an essential work, humane
and candid, that challenges and
expands our understanding of
the lives of contemporary college
students.”
—Paul Tough, author of
Helping Children Succeed
Open
The Progressive Case for
Free Trade, Immigration,
and Global Capital
Kimberly Clausing
“Global integration will not work
if it means local disintegration.
Kim Clausing’s important book
lays out the economics of glo-
balization and, more important,
shows how globalization can be
made to work for the vast majority
of Americans.”
—Lawrence H. Summers,
Harvard University,
former Treasury Secretary
Hattiesburg
An American City
in Black and White
William Sturkey
Belknap Press
“Hattiesburg is not connected in
the popular mind with civil rights
history in the way of Selma and
Montgomery, but Sturkey’s vi-
brant history makes a strong case
that, to understand how the civil
rights movement emerged, it’s
essential to spend time there.”
—Publishers Weekly
hup.harvard.edu
28
profile of his friend Allan Bloom,
which quoted Bellow’s remarks mock-
ing a student movement at Stanford
to cancel a Western civilization class
on the grounds that it was racist, re-
marks that to this day haunt his ghost:
“Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The
Proust of the Papuans? I’d be glad to
read them.” When he was asked by a
Washington Post interviewer about
his unflattering portrayal of a female
character in his story “What Kind of
Day Did You Have?,” a woman who is
“old-fashioned and sexually enslaved
without a mind of her own,” Bellow
responded, “Well, I’m sorry girls—but
many of you are like that, very much
so. It’s going to take a lot more than
a few books by Germaine Greer or
whatshername Betty Friedan to root
out completely the Sleeping Beauty
syndrome.” Bellow nevertheless con-
sidered himself “some sort of liberal,”
despite his distaste for the left’s “taboo
on open discussion.”
He violated a major taboo on the
right, however, when he suggested in
Ravelstein (2000), his fictionalized eu-
logy for Bloom, that his late friend was
a homosexual who had died of AIDS.
Bloom’s friends had known of his ho-
mosexuality but kept it private out of
fear that the revelation would destroy
his reputation in conservative circles.
“They see themselves as having a spe-
cial pious duty to protect Bloom,” Bel-
low told the Times, once again forced
to defend himself. “I can understand
that, because for them it’s not just a
friend, it’s a movement.” The piece was
titled “With Friends Like Saul Bellow”
and illustrated with an image of a dag-
ger; a Wall Street Journal article about
the controversy was accompanied by a
drawing of a man being stabbed in the
back.
“I couldn’t be both truthful and cam-
ouflaged.” Bellow meant true to the re-
quirements of fiction, which demands
that any believable character must be
full of contradictions, secrets, regrets.
For Ravelstein to succeed as fiction,
it required “the elasticity provided by
sin.” Absent disclosure of Bloom’s se-
cret life, the character would be false—
a two- dimensional public figure instead
of the private person, who was the only
one worth writing a novel about.
T here were two kinds of writers, Bel-
low said in a 1975 interview: “great-
public writers” and “small-public
writers.” The second category was
typified by the modernists, who em-
phasized stylistic artistry over social
protest: Flaubert, Joyce, and Baude-
laire. The great-public writers, who had
largely fallen out of fashion, “thought
of themselves as spokesmen for a na-
tional conscience. They addressed
grand issues of social justice and po-
litical concern.” He cited as examples
Dreiser, Dickens, Zola, Upton Sinclair,
and Sherwood Anderson—and him-
self. Bellow did not, in the interview,
acknowledge that he had started out as
a small-public writer. Dangling Man,
The Victim, The Adventures of Augie
March, Seize the Day, and Henderson
New York Review Books
(including NYRB Classics and Poets, The New York Review Children’s Collection, and NYR Comics)
Editor: Edwin Frank Managing Editor: Sara Kramer
Senior Editors: Susan Barba, Michael Shae, Gabriel Winslow-Yost, Lucas Adams
Linda Hollick, Publisher; Nicholas During, Publicity; Abigail Dunn, Marketing Manager; Hilary Reid, Marketing
Associate; Evan Johnston and Daniel Drake, Production; Patrick Hederman and Alaina Taylor, Rights; Yongsun
Bark, Distribution.
the Rain King, though wildly divergent
in sensibility and plot, shared a nar-
rative emphasis on the forging of an
identity and, for Bellow himself, the
forging of a personal style. Later in life
he regretted, as the narrator of The
Bellarosa Connection (1989) puts it,
“snoozing through” the Holocaust. But
he went great-public with Herzog for
good; like the Romantic scholar Moses
Herzog, Bellow became the author
of a “new sort of history . . . personal,
engagée.” In the later novels, Bellow
achieved what he could not do in his
essays, speeches, and reportage: he al-
lowed the great public noise of his age
into the innermost reaches of his char-
acters’ thoughts and feelings. He made
the public personal.
These novels perform a double trick.
They dramatize Bellow’s own struggle
to connect the outer world with his
inner world; and, in so doing, they pro-
vide a model for how to pursue what
Charlie Citrine and Artur Sammler call
“higher consciousness” without fleeing
society and joining a monastery. “The
practical questions have thus become
the ultimate questions,” says Moses
Herzog. “To live in an inspired condi-
tion, to know truth, to be free, to love
another, to consummate existence . . .
is not reserved for gods, kings, poets,
priests, shrines, but belongs to man-
kind and to all of existence.” The path
to enlightenment lies not in renouncing
the world but in seeing it more clearly.
So we get Sammler emerging at
night onto Riverside Drive, its urine-
soaked phone booths lit bright by
the streetlamps: “All metaphysicians
please note. Here is how it is. You will
never see more clearly. And what do
you make of it?” Citrine seeking tran-
scendence in daily ephemera: “Often
I sat at the end of the day remember-
ing everything that had happened,
in minute detail.” And Albert Corde
throwing himself headlong, heed-
lessly, into a painful scrutiny of the
Chicago Criminal Courts Building and
Cabrini Green: as long as “the spirit
of the time” doesn’t “come to us with
some kind of reality, as facts of expe-
rience, then all we can have instead
of good and evil is . . .well, concepts.
Then we’ll never learn how the soul is
worked on.”
Edward Shils, a don of the Committee
on Social Thought with whom Bellow
fell out late in their lives, condemned
Bellow’s refusal to “take sides.” A
“great novelist,” groused Shils, “has to
have some moral sense. That has been
Bellow’s blind spot.” Shils cited Bel-
low’s “self-indulgent” characters and
Bellow’s own self-indulgence, “as he
floated from one woman to the other.”
Leader is unstinting on Bellow’s per-
sonal moral failings—the infidelities
and cruelties to the women who loved
him, the high-handedness with close
friends who asked for favors, profes-
sional underlings (his agents nick-
named him “God”), and his sons. But
the novels themselves do articulate a
consistent moral vision. They reveal
how the soul is worked on by an age of
radical social upheaval—and how the
soul must respond.
The New York Review

Unnatural Naturalism
Victorian Radicals:
From the Pre- Raphaelites to
the Arts and Crafts Movement
an exhibition at the
Oklahoma City Museum of Art,
October 11, 2018–January 6, 2019;
the Vero Beach Museum of Art,
February 9–May 5, 2019; the Seattle
Art Museum, June 13–September 8,
2019; the San Antonio Museum of Art,
October 11, 2019–January 5, 2020;
the Yale Center for British Art,
February 13–May 10, 2020;
the Nevada Museum of Art,
June 20–September 13, 2020;
and the Frick Pittsburgh, October 29,
2020–January 24, 2021.
Catalog of the exhibition
by Martin Ellis, Victoria Osborne,
and Tim Barringer.
American Federation of Arts/
DelMonico, 280 pp., $65.00
Christina Rossetti:
Poetry in Art
edited by Susan Owens
and Nicholas Tromans.
Yale University Press, 192 pp., $40.00
It’s common for restive artists to con-
clude that the current generation has
lost its way—less common, perhaps, to
look back more than four hundred years
for a solution. When a small band of
would-be reformers met at the London
house of John Everett Millais in 1848
and emerged as the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, they were deliberately
rejecting not just the work of their most
prominent contemporaries but a long-
established consensus on the develop-
ment of European art. (In addition to
Millais, the original PRB, as it styled
itself, included Dante Gabriel Rossetti
and his brother William, who would
later help document the movement,
the painters William Holman Hunt
and James Collinson, the sculptor
Thomas Woolner, and the future critic
Frederic George Stephens.) Though
Raphael’s influence dated back to the
sixteenth century, the idea that paint-
ers should follow rules derived from his
practice had hardened into orthodoxy
after Sir Joshua Reynolds delivered his
Discourses (1769–1790) to the Royal
Academy.
Hunt’s retrospective account of the
movement contended that it was those
rules, rather than Raphael himself,
that had proved the stumbling block—
“Pre-Raphaelitism,” he said, “is not
Pre-Raphaelism.” The group’s princi-
pal champion, John Ruskin, insisted
that “nature only” was their model.
But there is no question that nature,
as the Brotherhood saw it, was heav-
ily mediated by art, especially that of
the late Middle Ages and early Renais-
sance. Victorian Radicals, the cata-
log of an exhibition drawn from the
collections of the Birmingham Mu-
seums and currently traveling to mul-
tiple venues in the US, begins its story
with those it calls, paradoxically, “the
pre-Raphaelite avant-garde”: artists
who led the way by rediscovering the
achievement of predecessors who had
often been dismissed as primitive.
The initial impetus of the PRB was
more aesthetic than political. But be-
cause of the group’s identification with
March 21, 2019
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Ruth Bernard Yeazell
Frederick Sandys: Medea, 1866 –1868
Ruskin, who brooked no such distinc-
tion, and their influence on subsequent
artists like William Morris, Victo-
rian Radicals assimilates them into a
broader history of resistance to indus-
trial capitalism in Britain, a movement
that itself sought to transform present
conditions by looking to the past. The
catalog pays tribute to three genera-
tions of artists for whom the growth
of places like Birmingham, and all it
represented, was anathema. The con-
tributors to the volume recognize the
irony, even as they recount how a city
known for its manufacturing boom and
scorned by a German visitor in 1842
as “a very desert” for fine arts became
home to one of the strongest collections
of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world, as
well as a major center for the craft re-
vival at the turn of the century.
Repelled by what he called “the
depressing and monotonous circum-
stances of English manufacturing
life,” Ruskin found his ideal antith-
esis to the depredations of the factory
system in the unalienated labor of the
medieval craftsman. This was also
the ideal that lay behind the decorat-
ing firm Morris founded with several
other artists in 1861, as well as the
broader Arts and Crafts movement
it inspired. Not all sympathizers with
the movement shared Morris’s in-
creasing commitment to socialism.
But the spirit of communal production
persisted, as did the firm’s program of
design reform.
they ostensibly opposed, since the
Birmingham Museums Trust/American Federation of Arts
chief benefactors of the Birmingham
museum, like many individual patrons
of Pre-Raphaelite art, were wealthy
industrialists. Morris founded a press
dedicated to the art of the handmade
book, but that didn’t prevent his fel-
low artists from relying on advances
in printing technology for the distri-
bution of engravings after their work.
Nor did the radicals’ critique of in-
dustrialization extend to the coloristic
possibilities afforded by synthetic dye:
the catalog particularly notes the newly
available “intense pinks, greens, and
purples” that distinguished the Pre-
Raphaelites’ palette. As late as 1894,
however, Burne-Jones was still wryly
claiming his place in an alternate his-
tory. “Birmingham is my city according
to the facts,” he told a critic, “but in re-
ality Assisi is my birthplace.”
That “reality”—true to the imagi-
nation rather than fact— points to
a central difficulty in assessing the
Pre-Raphaelites’ legacy. According
to Ruskin, they wanted nothing more
than to paint with the greatest accu-
racy possible. “As far as in them lies,”
he insisted, “they will either draw what
they see, or what they suppose to have
been the actual facts of the scene they
desire to represent, irrespective of any
conventional rules of picture-making.”
This is a defense of realism that affords
considerable room for making things
up. The Pre-Raphaelites often painted
historical pictures, including sacred
ones, from contemporary models, with-
out attempting to idealize or prettify
the results.
Some of the outrage that greeted
One reason Birmingham proved so their early work appears to have been
accommodating to the reformers was triggered by this practice: Charles
that its industry had typically been Dickens, for example, notoriously tore
based in small workshops, rather than into Millais’s Christ in the House of
large factories as in Manchester. An- His Parents (1849–1850), denouncing
other was a tradition of local activism the Christ as “a blubbering red-haired
rooted in liberal politics, which aided boy in a nightgown” and its Virgin as
in establishing the city’s first public “a kneeling woman so horrible in her
library and art gallery in the 1860s, ugliness that . . . she would stand out
followed in 1885 by the simultaneous from the rest of the company as a mon-
opening of the present museum build- ster in the vilest cabaret in France or
ings (the gallery now folded in) and in the lowest gin-shop in England.”
the nearby Municipal School of Art. It Millais’s painting, which hangs in the
also helped— eventually—that Morris’s Tate, does not appear in Victorian
main partner was a disaffected native Radicals, but the catalog does include
of Birmingham, Edward Burne-Jones. Hunt’s The Finding of the Saviour in
Burne-Jones had long sought to keep the Temple (1854–1860), for which
as clear of his birthplace as possible. By the artist traveled to the Holy Land in
1877, however, a rapprochement was search of ethnographic accuracy, only
underway, signaled most immediately to find himself compelled to model his
by the installation of a stained-glass rabbis after Jews in London when those
window he had designed for Morris & in Jerusalem refused to sit for him, and
Co. in a church in the center of town. to adapt the temple itself from a rep-
Further commissions for stained glass lica of the Alhambra at the Crystal
followed, including a magnificent Last Palace.
Judgment for the city’s cathedral. A Other pictures tackled modern life
loan exhibition of eleven Burne-Jones more directly: the fatal trajectory of
paintings accompanied the opening of a prostitute in Rossetti’s unfinished
the new Birmingham Museum and Art Found, for instance— here represented
Gallery in 1885, and two years later by three early sketches— or the ex-
the museum commissioned its first ploitation of labor in Henry Wallis’s
work by the artist for its permanent The Stone Breaker (1857), with its sol-
collection— an acquisition celebrated emn image of a worker’s corpse set
in 1891 with a major show of Pre- against the dying light of the sun. Such
Raphaelite paintings and drawings, the pictures also, of course, “suppose . . .
largest to date. the actual facts”: they are staged genre
As is so often the case, the radicals paintings, not direct transcriptions of
were being underwritten by the forces a scene. Presumably it is works like
29
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these to which Tim Barringer refers
in his catalog essay when he speaks of
the “searing visual representations of
the real” that constitute one dimension
of Pre-Raphaelite radicalism. They
remain, however, a distinct minority
in the catalog as a whole, which is far
more given to the fanciful and decora-
tive impulses in the art of Rossetti and
his successors.
Though Ruskin liked to pretend
that the Pre-Raphaelites had simply
discarded pictorial convention for the
direct observation of nature, modern
scholarship has instead emphasized
how much they learned about look-
ing from their visits to the museum—
especially after the arrival of Jan
Unlike Turner, who fits with com-
parative ease into a familiar history
of modern art from the French Im-
pressionists to Abstract Expression-
ism, the heirs of the Pre-Raphaelites
are at once harder to trace and more
various. Victorian Radicals concen-
trates primarily on the line that leads
through Rossetti to the Aestheticism
of Morris and Burne-Jones—with its
heightened emphasis on visual plea-
sure, on art for art’s sake rather than
for representational or didactic pur-
poses—and thence to the Arts and
Crafts movement that flourished in
turn- of-the- century Birmingham. One
might also link Burne-Jones in particu-
It’s all the more striking, then, that
in one respect these radicals scarcely
broke with tradition at all: their con-
tinued bias toward the literary. The
academic doctrine according to which
history painting ranked at the very top
of the hierarchy and still life at the bot-
tom had its origins in a long-standing
privileging of head over hand that the
Pre-Raphaelites never really repudi-
ated, despite their connections to later
craft movements. “Above all, they de-
termined these pictures should at least
mean something,” Stephens had writ-
ten of them in 1860; and to judge by the
works collected here, that determina-
tion persisted well beyond the PRB’s

Private Collection
van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait at the
National Gallery in 1842. Elizabeth
Prettejohn has recently argued that
Rossetti taught himself to paint by
imitating what he understood of Van
Eyck’s method, as the Portrait’s un-
mixed color, meticulously rendered de-

SUMMER tail, and high finish became a model for

Pre-Raphaelite realism.1
Yet the sense of reality conveyed by

SCORCHER. a picture in this style is of a very pecu-

liar kind. Perhaps inspired by the ring-
ing exhortation with which Ruskin had
concluded the first volume of Modern
Painters (1843)—“go to Nature in all
singleness of heart . . . rejecting noth-
ing, selecting nothing, and scorning
nothing”—many Pre-Raphaelite paint-
ings seem determined to keep every
detail of the image simultaneously in
focus, as if privileging some portions of
the canvas over others would mean suc-
cumbing to conventional hierarchies of
value. The same careful notation of
individual features that proves so con-
THREEWEEKS vincing in an isolated sketch, like the
preparatory drawings of grasses and
OFSEMINARS ivy by Frederick Sandys reproduced
July 7-12 in Victorian Radicals, turns hallucina-
tory when used throughout an entire
July 14-19 painting.
Citing the Ruskin passage in an
July 21-26 entry on Ford Madox Brown’s Walton-
on- the- Naze (1859–1860), Barringer
observes how “the landscape is a cat-
alogue of individual objects and fea-
Weeklong seminars in tures . . . each seen in perfect focus and
with its own local color.” But Brown’s
literature, science, canvas, nearly half of which is devoted
to an expanse of thinly striated clouds, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Portrait of Christina Rossetti, 1866
history, film, and looks positively atmospheric when
compared to pictures like Hunt’s Find- lar to Art Nouveau and virtually the early years, and even beyond the mak-
philosophy for ing of the Saviour or Arthur Hughes’s entire company to the Symbolists and ing of pictures itself.
The Long Engagement (circa 1854– Surrealists. Victoria Osborne notes a Not every image in Victorian Radi-
adults of all ages. 1859). Though Hughes’s painting is debt to Gustav Klimt in one of the last cals tries to “mean something” in Ste-
set outdoors, he deliberately keeps images of the exhibition, a watercolor phens’s sense, but most do, whether by
his space shallow, surrounding the en- of an elongated figure by the twentieth- invoking earlier literature (the Bible,
gaged couple with an outgrowth of pre- century Birmingham painter Maxwell Greek mythology, and Arthurian leg-
REGISTERONLINE cisely delineated foliage that appears Ashby Armfield titled, after some lines ends are particular favorites) or by
to fill every available cranny. Barringer by Algernon Swinburne, Where the si- implying narratives and constructing
WWW.SJC.EDU/SUMMER-CLASSICS calls it “a remarkable demonstration lence is more than all tunes . . . (1902); allegories. Still life is nonexistent, land-
of Pre-Raphaelite naturalism,” but to but Klimt is himself anticipated by a scape and portraiture comparatively
my eye the ultimate effect is distinctly picture like Sandys’s Medea (1866– rare, unless one counts paintings like
unnatural: a heightening and intensi- 1868), with its stunning femme fatale Medea, Simeon Solomon’s Bacchus
fication of ordinary vision rather than against a gold-leaf ground, begun only (1867), or the Birmingham version
an attempt to evoke it on canvas. Such four years after the Viennese Symbol- of Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix (“blessed
paintings more nearly resemble late- ist’s birth (see illustration on page 29). Beatrice”), completed by Brown with a
twentieth- century works of hyperreal- And then there’s a trajectory briefly different model after the artist’s death,
ism than they do anything by Ruskin’s invoked by Barringer’s catalog essay and like the others purporting to rep-
favorite artist of the previous genera- that leads to “many of the twentieth resent not a living person but a figure
tion, J. M.W. Turner. century’s utopian enterprises, from the from literature or myth.
founding of the British Labour Party to Rossetti’s ambitions as a poet were
Bauhaus design theory and even Ma- every bit as intense as his desire to
hatma Gandhi’s political philosophy”— paint, and though he would partly cede
1 though in the case of Gandhi, at least, the field to his sister Christina, he con-
Elizabeth Prettejohn, Modern Paint-
ers, Old Masters: The Art of Imitation what connects him to the artists here tinued to produce work in both media
SJCEDU from the Pre-Raphaelites to the First is a shared admiration for Ruskin’s throughout his career. One of the
World War (Yale University Press, critique of alienated labor rather than PRB’s first projects as a collective was
2017). See my review in the NYR Daily, a taste for European painting before a periodical called The Germ (1850),
August 7, 2017. Raphael. subtitled “Thoughts Towards Nature

30 The New York Review


in Poetry, Literature and Art.” Though
it folded after four numbers, its char-
acteristic juxtapositions of word and
image— every issue’s etching was ac-
companied by a poem—remained cen-
tral to Pre-Raphaelite practice.
While there’s admittedly nothing
literary about the glassware or the
dresses featured in Victorian Radi-
cals, other decorative objects display
their affinities to literature: tiles de-
signed by Burne-Jones with figures
from fairy tale and myth; a wooden
chest ornamented in gold leaf, also by
Burne-Jones, that has a scene from the
Garden of the Hesperides on its front
panel and poetry by Morris carved in
relief at either end; even a bedcover
embroidered by a teacher of needle-
work named Mary Jane Newill with
quotations from an ode by William
Wordsworth.
Newill, whose bedcover dates from
1908, is among a number of women
who appear in the catalog, especially
as it approaches the Arts and Crafts
movement. Although women were by
definition excluded from the Broth-
erhood, they were influential in the
Pre-Raphaelite circle too, as Barrin-
ger remarks in a passing tribute to the
wasted talents of Rossetti’s model and
later wife, Elizabeth Siddall.
The index for Victorian Radicals has
no entry for Christina Rossetti, how-
ever, despite Gabriel’s having origi-
nally invited his younger sister to join
the literary club that would morph into
the PRB and his publishing several of
her poems— first anonymously and
then under a pseudonym—in three of
The Germ’s four issues. When not yet
eighteen, she agreed to marry another
Pre-Raphaelite painter, James Col-
linson, though the engagement was
broken off two years later, apparently
on the grounds of religious difference.
(Unlike Christina, James was a Catho-
lic.) She also modeled for the Virgin
Mary in two of Gabriel’s early canvases
and— more surprisingly—for the face
of Christ in Hunt’s much-reproduced
picture The Light of the World (1851–
1853), as well as the figure of a fallen
woman covering her face in shame in
a pen-and-ink drawing by Gabriel. In
her early twenties, Christina herself
studied art, presumably with the hope
of teaching drawing at a day school she
had recently opened with her mother.
Though that prospect never material-
ized, she continued to produce small
emblematic drawings for her own pur-
poses, adding such “scratches,” as she
called them, to both her manuscripts
and printed books.
Several of the Pre-Raphaelites, in-
cluding Gabriel, provided images to
accompany her early poems; Hughes
painted two pictures inspired by her
work and went on to illustrate her
books for children; Julia Margaret
Cameron and Charles Dodgson (bet-
ter known as Lewis Carroll) each in-
scribed a photograph with a quotation
from her verse. A few years before her
death in 1894, the Belgian Symbol-
ist Fernand Khnopff borrowed her
words to title two haunting images,
Who Shall Deliver Me? and I Lock
My Door Upon Myself; the latter
was exhibited in London and in turn
prompted Edward Hughes (nephew
of Arthur) to substitute a brief quota-
tion from another of her poems for the
title of his own Christina-haunted pic-
ture, “Oh what’s that in the hollow, so
pale I quake to follow?”/“Oh that’s a
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thin dead body which waits the eternal
term.”
The editors of Christina Rossetti:
Poetry in Art—which is advertised as
the first book to bring this material
together— are surely right to argue that
she composed her work in an atmo-
sphere saturated with visual art. But
unlike her brother, Christina appears
never to have breathed easily in that air.
A profoundly committed Christian,
as Gabriel was not, and a finer poet,
she nonetheless lacked what might be
called his incarnational aesthetic. “I
am afraid you find art interfere[s] with
the legitimate exercise of anguish,” an
exasperated Gabriel was already com-
plaining when she was still in her early
twenties, after she refused his offer
to teach her. But the conflict between
anguish and art—visual art, at least—
only intensified with her growing as-
ceticism. She didn’t reject images,
obviously, but the evidence suggests
that she grew increasingly wary of
their appeal.
In one of her best-known and most
disturbing poems, “Goblin Market”
(1862), the temptation to see, hear, and
taste almost destroys a young woman,
who is only saved by her sister’s willing-
ness to confront that same temptation
in her place. What the goblins are ped-
dling is luscious fruit, and the domi-
nant metaphor is hunger, but Rossetti’s
incantatory language scarcely distin-
guishes among the promised tastes, the
sound of the goblin cries, and the look
of the fruits on offer:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom- down- cheeked peaches,
Swart- headed mulberries,
Wild free- born cranberries,
Crab- apples, dewberries,
Pine- apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries;—
All ripe together
In summer weather . . .
Come buy, come buy.
The voluptuous intensity with which
“sweet-tooth” Laura eagerly devours
the goblin fruit—“She sucked and
sucked and sucked the more/. . . She
sucked until her lips were sore”—is
matched by that of the strange ritual
with which her sister both replicates
and undoes this scenario of frenzied
consumption. In order to save Laura,
who is fading away from “baulked de-
sire,” Lizzie ventures to the market in
her place, where she manages to resist
the goblins’ eroticized force-feeding,
and returns, her body smeared with
“forbidden” fruit, to offer herself up to
her sister:
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for
you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me.
Consuming the fruit in this fashion
proves at once poisonous and cura-
tive: though the juice is “wormwood
to her tongue,” and Laura nearly dies
of the experience, she awakes the next
day restored to innocence. The poem
concludes with both sisters safely mar-
ried, their encounter with “the wicked,
quaint fruit-merchant men” now a story termination to wall out everything else:
they tell their children. “I lock my door upon myself,/And bar
Rossetti’s enigmatic fairy tale has them out; but who shall wall/Self from
lent itself to a variety of interpretations, myself, most loathed of all?” Whether
from an allegory of the nineteenth- or not such self-loathing was intensified
century marketplace to a coded tale in Rossetti’s case by the lingering ef-
of lesbian desire. The drawing Gabriel fects of sexual abuse, as her biographer
provided for the frontispiece of Goblin Jan Marsh has plausibly speculated, 2
Market and Other Poems (1862) tends the impulse registered by the poem
to encourage the latter reading, with its hardly seems compatible with what
image of the two sisters, “Golden head Barringer calls, in Victorian Radicals,
by golden head,” locked in each other’s the Pre-Raphaelites’ “revelation of the
arms. In 1973 Playboy published a set profusion and chromatic splendor of
of colored illustrations of the poem the natural world.”
by the artist and commercial illustra- One of the few illustrations of her
tor Kinuko Craft in which he predict- work that the poet apparently singled
ably made such erotic undertones more out for praise is an etiolated draw-
explicit, even as he knowingly alluded ing by Charles Ricketts designed to
to a previous set of illustrations pro- accompany the publication of a late
duced by Arthur Rackham forty years poem entitled “An Echo from Wil-
earlier. Stephen Calloway’s chapter on lowwood” (1890). In the poem, “two
book illustration records, in addition wistful faces craving each for each”
to the Playboy version, a graphic novel gaze upon their reflections in a pool
of 1984, represented here by an image of water, their imminent parting ren-
of the bare-breasted sisters embracing. dered visible, paradoxically, when “a
Rossetti’s original title for the poem sudden ripple” disturbs the water’s
was “A Peep at the Goblins,” and sub- surface and causes their images “to
sequent artists clearly found it a power- vanish out of reach.” Ricketts’s draw-
ful incitement to voyeurism. ing responds to this disappearing act
Rossetti herself, however, often with a delicate “filigree”—the word is
seemed bent on resisting the pleasures his— of semi-abstract forms that swirl
of the visible. The poem that later in- around two bodiless faces, one chastely
spired Khnopff’s evocative images was applying his lips to the other’s cheek
composed only two years after “Goblin and both rendered in lines even more
Market,” but its renunciatory stance is finely drawn than the rest of the image.
typical of the devotional writing that It’s a visual artist’s solution to an art in
would eventually dominate her work. which the Word finally trumps the lure
Titled after a passage from Romans of images.
(“O wretched man that I am! who
shall deliver me from the body of this 2
Jan Marsh, Christina Rossetti: A Writ-
death?”), the poem both pleads for er’s Life (Viking, 1995), reviewed in
God’s help in bearing the “weight” of these pages by Fiona MacCarthy, No-
the self and defiantly announces its de- vember 2, 1995.
William
Hunter
and the
anatomy of
the modern
museum
February 14–
May 20, 2019
Allan Ramsay, William Hunter
(detail), 1764–65, oil on canvas
The Hunterian, University of
Glasgow
free and open to the public
1080 Chapel Street, New Haven
1 877 BRIT ART | britishart.yale.edu
@yalebritishart | #Hunter300
This exhibition has been organized by the
Yale Center for British Art in partnership with
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow.
31

‘There’s One Humanity or There Isn’t’:
A Conversation
The following conversation between
Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Nobel
Prize–winning Nigerian writer Wole
Soyinka took place in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in November 2018.
—The Editors
Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Wole, what’s
your view of Donald Trump’s impact
on Africa, and how is he perceived in
Africa?
Wole Soyinka: Well, that is one hell of
a question to begin with. Let me put it
quite bluntly. He is considered a loose
cannon that is discharging long-hidden
attitudes, racial attitudes, xenophobic
attitudes.
Gates: Was there a cause and effect rela-
tion between the fact that a black man
occupied the White House for eight
years and then his opposite was elected?
Soyinka: Trump came in on a platform
of political, racial, and ideological ha-
tred for Obama. He was not even subtle
about his mission of dismantling the
legacy of this black man.
Gates: And unprecedented, in my ex-
perience, to have a politician say, “My
prime focus is going to be on undoing
the policies of the man who preceded
me.”
Soyinka: It’s unusual. In Nigeria and
other places, when you hear a presi-
dent or a governor come in and start
badmouthing the policies, attainments,
or activities of his predecessor, usually
there’s only one purpose. You cancel
that, you cancel this, you cancel that,
so you can start all over and make your
own money. In other words, corruption
is often at the bottom of it. [Laughter]
This is the first time I have seen an
iconoclastic approach, pure negativity
on its own as a purpose, as an ideology
of an incoming president. It’s like tell-
ing Americans, “You people have been
sold a dummy. I’m the authentic Ameri-
can and therefore I can do what I want.”
Gates: Is it accurate to say that Donald
Trump’s a racist?
Soyinka: Oh, yes, I believe so. I know
that politicians can say or do anything,
but at the same time, I find it totally
diabolical that a dangerous weapon
like racism can be used to ascend to
office. Political racism is divisive. It’s
used as a weapon deliberately to set
one side against the other. Any head
of state, even a minor elected offi-
cer, who can make statements about
“shithole countries”— and actually
name them!— and who says, “But on
the other hand, get me the blue- eyed
Norwegians. I don’t mind them com-
ing into the country.” [Laughter] How
much more racist can you get? How
close to the pernicious doctrine of the
blue- eyed Aryan ideal of humanity?
Gates: You tore up your green card
when you heard that Trump had been
elected president. Why did you do that?
32
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Wole Soyinka and Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Soyinka: Because I saw what was hap-
pening. And many people do not know
how emotionally, not just historically
or intellectually, attached I am to our
diaspora.
Gates: To the African diaspora?
Soyinka: Yes, absolutely, the African
diaspora, whether in the United States,
the Caribbean, or even Iraq,
where we’ve discovered the
Zanj.1 One of the little-known
facts about me is I have a tiny,
minuscule footnote in the de-
segregation of America, which
is that I, personally, deseg-
regated a swimming pool in
Atlanta during a conference
there in the early 1960s. The
thrill of seeing a black man
ascend to the highest position
in this slave- culture nation
was for me as good as watch-
ing the lift- off of a rocket into
space. And so when I saw what
looked like a reversal of the
gains of the black diaspora, I
became alarmed and despon-
dent. I saw it coming, and I
said, “If the Americans allow
this to happen, this man spew-
ing divisive and racist rhetoric,
I’m going to reduce the status
of my relationship to this na-
tion.” So it was not saying I
was turning my back entirely
on the United States. It was a
statement of how I felt. In ad-
dition to cutting up the card, I
went to the embassy.
Gates: You cut it up?
Soyinka: It was difficult to
tear. [Laughter] I didn’t know
how to tear it. I cut it up. I carry it
around as a talisman, so that if ever I’m
denied entry into the United States I
will just say, “Okay, I know why you’re
doing it. You want souvenirs? I’ll give
them a piece.” So I went to the embassy
because you have to formalize it as well.
Gates: So you signed the repudiation.
You didn’t take it back?
Soyinka: I will consider taking it back
when you get rid of Trump.
Gates: You’re a Nobel laureate. I re-
member many people were surprised—
some elated, some shocked—when the
committee gave Obama the Nobel
Peace Prize shortly after he was elected.
What did you think about that?
Soyinka: I can tell you frankly that I
did not find it a positive gesture. Heads
of states find themselves sooner or later
compelled to take drastic action, some
kind of action that cannot be consid-
ered in the nature of peace, but that
1
A population of African slaves in
what is now Iraq, who rebelled in 869.
They carved out an independent state
for themselves and resisted reconquest
until 883.
may be justified by circumstances—I
mean, if you are being attacked, for
instance. If you come and attack even
my so- called Nigeria for no reason at
all and the head of state does not take
appropriate action, I’ll be in the fore-
front of those who want to throw him
out of office. And I believe that people
in that kind of position where they
have to make difficult choices should
Wole Soyinka, New York City, May 2011;
photograph by Dominique Nabokov
not be lumbered with an award called
the Peace Prize. After he has left of-
fice you can look at his entire record
and see whether some policies were
put in place or some actions were taken
that furthered the process of peace.
Because for me peace is not a trivial
virtue. It’s something that the entire
universe craves sooner or later. One
shouldn’t have to live up to a prize. A
prize should be post facto. That’s the
only reason I was against the award.
Gates: How would you assess Obama’s
legacy as president?
Soyinka: From the way it affected me
personally when I was a green- card
holder, a permanent resident of this
place, I can say thank goodness for
Obamacare at critical times for my
family. So I know the value of that. I
know its meaning for ordinary people.
And for anyone to set about disman-
tling it, for me it amounts to a crime
against humanity.
On foreign policy, obviously Obama
was firm when necessary. I remember
his first declarations after he became
president: “We offer a hand of friend-
ship, but at the same time we are ready
with the fist of resistance.” I think that
spells out what should be the philoso-
phy of any ruler in the world. Some
people thought he was cautious to the
point of timidity. I disagree entirely.
The proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction makes it possible for a third
world war to be started just like that.
We’re living in a very volatile world
that requires balance and caution.
He demonstrated it in that unbe-
lievable exploit of getting Osama bin
Laden. It takes a cool, prin-
Dominique Nabokov
cipled, and committed leader
to authorize that kind of op-
eration as a signal to the world
that you don’t commit that
kind of atrocity without ex-
pecting repercussions. It took
courage. People made the
argument that it was extraju-
dicial killing. I find that very
amusing. It was a global crime
and Obama took action.
Simultaneously, however,
Obama’s, shall we say, ecumen-
ism, his sense of commitment
to the equality of cultures,
sometimes led him up the
wrong path. His Cairo state-
ment, for instance, I thought
was a disaster in terms of the
liberation of humanity—when
he spoke about his, not quite
approval, but endorsement
of the right of any culture to
force women to be veiled. That
kind of speech made human-
ity a relative concept. For me,
there’s one humanity or there
isn’t. No culture has a right
to degrade its womanhood.
Even if you can do nothing
about it, you at least must
never make a statement that
supports any notion of cul-
tural relativism, not when
the dignity and fundamental
rights of humanity are involved.
And Obama, I believe, carried too
far his distancing from the black com-
munity. I found that very troubling.
Until full racial equity is established—
it won’t be in my lifetime, it probably
won’t be in yours—as a sort of unthink-
ing, casual way of social existence,
there must always be some kind of no-
tice taken of the disadvantaged section
of society, whether we’re talking on
gender lines or on racial lines. And I
believe Obama turned his back on that
kind of recognition.
I think those are the major issues I
had with Obama. Otherwise, I thought
his was one of the most progressive ten-
ures in the White House, and I think
Americans have a right to lament their
choice in the last election. [Laughter]
Gates: Every time I visit South Africa
I’m shocked at the class divide. A small
class of black billionaires has arisen since
the end of apartheid. (Curiously, three
of the country’s top ten richest men suf-
fered imprisonment under apartheid.)
Nevertheless, the class divide within
the black community in South Africa is
huge. Do you see that changing?
Soyinka: I believe it will evolve. Right
now, one views it with surprise for one
The New York Review

reason. The party that eventually came
to power, the ANC, has been part of
the fabric of South African politics
and development from the beginning
of the black struggle— as a moral force,
a political, ideological force. Definitely
it was socialist. The Western powers,
of course, insisted it was communism,
communism was coming to take over,
etc. But socialism was the guiding prin-
ciple of the ANC .
I frankly expected a far more radi-
cal transformation in South Africa.
It hasn’t been as fast as one expected,
and that is disappointing. Some of
the factors can be traced to that mon-
ster again, corruption, at the top. And
that’s really disheartening because we
were looking forward to pointing to
South Africa as a model of fast reform,
a greater egalitarian political con-
sciousness after decades, centuries of
Meleko Mokgosi: Fully Belly II, 2014; from Pax Kaffraria, a book of Mokgosi’s paintings about the effects of colonialism and nationalism in southern Africa, published by the Hammer Museum in 2014
oppression by a minority. And it’s just
disastrous for us that this “revolution”
is unraveling before our eyes.
We’re watching the change of power
from Jacob Zuma to Cyril Ramaphosa.
I know Ramaphosa personally. As a
businessman before he became presi-
dent, he took advantage of the con-
certed effort to devolve commercial
power to the blacks. He benefited from
that; so did many, many others. It now
remains to be seen whether he tries to
spread, shall we say, the luck of timing
to the rest, especially the black impov-
erished majority.
Gates: Where did South Africa go
wrong? Was it under Mandela or was it
after Mandela passed the presidency to
Thabo Mbeki?
Soyinka: No, I don’t think that you
could for one moment attribute it to
Mandela. The transfer of power—we’re
talking about both economic and po-
litical power—is always a very delicate
problem, I think, in any society that’s
just coming out of a particularly perni-
cious sociopolitical dispensation. South
Africa is not unique in that respect. We
saw it in the Soviet Union. But the pace
is slow. In South Africa the wealth al-
most entirely belonged to a very small
minority. That transitional process now
is the problem.
I have seen efforts, for instance, to
tackle the issue of housing, to move
people away from the old shanties to
decent, dignified, low- cost housing,
and these are positive moves. The own-
ership of land is an issue to be handled
with the greatest sensitivity, but at the
same time resolved soon. There may
come a time when a government, es-
pecially if it’s strongly in power and
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has become truly multiracial, as South
Africa is rapidly becoming, must say
to the land monopolists, “Listen, we’re
heading for another explosion. Let’s sit
down and talk and really adopt a policy
that requires sacrifice, that requires
relinquishing certain material advan-
tages.” If that takes place, I think we
will be able to see a faster improvement
in the conditions of South Africa.
Gates: How does that compare with the
yawning class divide in Nigeria?
Soyinka: They are probably on the
same level. The difference in Nigeria,
of course, is that it’s not marked by race,
so it’s not really as apparently agoniz-
ing as in the case of South Africa. We
created— as in South Africa— a new
class of millionaires from the military
ranks and their collaborators in civil
society. The oil wealth was just taken.
That’s why each head of state wants to
be the minister of petroleum, because
you have a mono- economy. All money
comes from one source. And once
you acquire the machinery to extract
it, which guarantees at least a certain
level of employment, then you pro-
ceed to neglect the alternative, once-
indispensable sources of income. So it
becomes very critical for a president, or
somebody from the privileged classes
who gets into power, to sit on that, and
then treat it like a personal largess to
dispense at will rather than using it
constructively for the overall transfor-
mation of society. It’s greed and it’s the
lust for power. Because as long as you
have the resources, those will guaran-
tee loyalty. That’s what’s been retard-
ing the progress of Nigeria.
Gates: What do you see as the future
of Nigeria? There have been times
when you’ve wondered if Nigeria really
should be a nation.
Soyinka: Oh, yes, of course, invari-
ably. We’re pursuing a centralized, an
overcentralized system of governance,
and yet we say that we are running an
“American form” of republicanism, of
democracy, and so on. It’s just a distor-
tion. So in Nigeria today you hear the
word restructure, restructure, restruc-
ture. Allow the states to create their
own wealth and utilize that wealth
along the lines of their priorities, which
differ from state to state. But if all
the resources are going to the center
and then the center doles out the very
minimum it has to by the constitution
(which itself requires changing), then it
can use the rest of the resources in its
hands to prop up useless, unproductive,
and corrupt states. And this is what has
been going on for so many years.
The cry today is, let’s decentralize.
Let each state either stand on its feet,
or else merge itself with other states.
Give up a bloated bureaucracy. Give
up a bloated legislature that consumes
in many cases over 50 percent of the
resources of each state. What kind of
a society is that, in which each leader
is free to generate projects that are of
no relevance whatever to the people?
They’re merely sources for taking
the percentage off, creaming off, and
neglecting development completely,
barely paying salaries. Obviously, the
system is not working.
Gates: Help us to understand the role
of religious fundamentalism in Nigeria
particularly, both Islamic and evangeli-
cal Christian.
Soyinka: It comes in various shapes,
and people think it judicious to be
evenhanded, but when we’re dealing
in deaths by the hundreds, and some-
times by the most horrendous means,
we have to be very blunt and frank.
There’s benign and negligible religious
fundamentalism and there’s malevo-
lent and vicious fundamentalism, and
unfortunately, it is the Islamic religion
that is producing that really corrosive
and destructive kind of fundamental-
ism. At least those who commit these
crimes against humanity claim that
they are Muslims. And it’s not suf-
ficient for the leaders, especially very
belatedly, to keep saying, “This is not
Islam.” We know that this is not Islam.
The important thing, what is critical, is
that it is the proponents of “authentic
Islam”—according to them—who are
committing these crimes against the
community. At the beginning they were
cossetted. They were mollycoddled.
The government bent over backward to
ignore the excesses. Their own religious
leaders kept mute for quite a while,
until they themselves became targets.
There were exceptions, I must always
stress that. Thank goodness, there
were, indeed, exceptions who from
the very beginning screamed out loud,
“This is not us. This is not our religion.
These people are renegades. They’re
psychopaths. We want nothing to do
with them.” But for political reasons
the government refused to take this mi-
nority seriously until recent times, until
we had shameful, shameful episodes
like the abduction of the schoolgirls
who were taken into the forest and kept
for years, traumatized, dehumanized.
One atrocity after another.
Ultimately, it’s an issue of impunity.
Either you have a constitution or you
do not. Either you have laws or you
do not. If you have laws and a group
of people insist on flouting those laws,
claiming that they are authorized by
their scriptures to commit crimes, then
they’re not part of the general polity.
The first response should have taken
place when the state of Zamfara decided
to adopt sharia law as the legal system.
We said, loudly, that this is against the
constitution. The constitution does not
allow for a theocratic state. However,
as usual in these matters, the policy of
appeasement was adopted by the then
president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who
was planning to perpetuate himself in
power. And we told him, “You have to
take action.” But he was wooing those
very sections for support in order to
prolong his stay in office. And so im-
punity reigned. One thing followed an-
other, both on major and minor scales.
Meleko Mokgosi/Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Human rights became a secondary
thought, if any. All kinds of punish-
ment not in the constitution, in the law
statutes, were adopted, such as, for in-
stance, amputation for petty thieving.
Yes, one instance did take place before
international pressure caused that gov-
ernment to put an end to it. But one at
the very least had already been carried
out, and others were threatened at the
time.
You remember the notorious case
of the woman who was to be stoned to
death? You asked earlier, don’t I feel
sometimes that Nigeria doesn’t deserve
to survive? I made up my mind that if
that sentence was carried out, I would
tear up my passport. I could not con-
ceive of living in a nation, calling my-
self a citizen of any nation that permits
such cruelty, to bury a woman up to her
neck and stone her head into mush. I
don’t care if it’s being done in Saudi
Arabia or Afghanistan.
So religious fundamentalism has
been allowed to take root. It could
have been stopped. It could have been
put in its proper place. Religion is your
private business. You want to organize
yourselves, to worship together? The
constitution permits it. If you want to
adopt a culture that does not impinge
on the rights of others, a culture that
is dictated by a religion, I don’t think
anybody will interfere. You want to veil
yourself from top to toe? I might find it
revolting to look at, but I’m not going to
tear off your hijab. But you cannot flout
the constitution in a way that imposes
on other sections of the community, you
cannot impose on others a mandatory
observance of your religious laws.
Gates: Paul Kagame, the president of
Rwanda, is often praised throughout
33

the United States, particularly by
philanthropists. What’s your take on
Kagame and Rwanda?
Soyinka: Kagame’s government is be-
ginning to slip into the contradictions
that he sought so valiantly at the begin-
ning to eliminate. I’m still very posi-
tive on Kagame and his government. I
believe he has achieved much for that
nation, considering its history and the
truly dismal sociopolitical reality that
he inherited. Allowing for the enormity
of the crime that nation committed
against itself— give it its proper name,
genocide—I give Kagame a hefty pass.
But I believe also that it has a human
rights record that requires very serious
attention. He needs to revamp his gov-
ernment agencies, especially the secu-
rity services, and so on.
I would have preferred that the
constitution had not been changed to
lengthen his tenure in office. I can un-
derstand, for once, the possible justifi-
cation of unfinished business. He was,
after all, rebuilding society, not even
from Ground Zero, but from below
level. But I still think that it would have
been a marvelous gift to the continent
if, after this herculean task of trans-
forming the nation, he had submitted
himself in the usual way to whatever
the constitution permitted, rather than
change it.
Gates: Is there a particular nation in
Africa in which you see hope in terms
of democracy, economic fairness?
Soyinka: I no longer use the word
“hope.” I just look at the records of the
past, the advances made since then,
and the evidence of sincerity in the
policies that are set. Hope, despair, and
so on—I’ve now moved completely be-
yond that.
I have not been there for quite a
while, but from reports and compara-
tive studies, I would say that Malawi
looks as if, since they got rid of Presi-
dent Hastings Banda, it’s been pro-
gressing almost continuously. Unless
one actually visits and interacts with
people it’s dangerous to make a pro-
nouncement. But from the little I know,
I would say that Malawi might be—
quietly, not sensationally, not spectacu-
larly or dramatically—one example of a
nation that is progressing at a pace that
would maintain a modern democratic
society.
Gates: In a time of social upheaval and
injustice writers have often resorted to
allegory to make their most powerful
appeals to the imagination of freedom.
Now, as a master of the mythic mode
yourself, how do you see the role of the
writer/activist today in the world that
you’ve been describing?
Soyinka: One of the things I like to
stress when I’m confronted with this
kind of question is that one must always
take this issue away from contempo-
rary times, so that it is understood that
in all societies there have always been
artists of conscience, sometimes struc-
tured in a ritualistic way. You have it in
your black culture. I know you have it
in Ethiopian culture. You have vestiges
in societies that mark the celebration of
All Fools’ Day— called different names
in different places—in which the alter-
native voice is heard, either directly or
through artistic contrivances, either
in plays, in masquerades, burlesques,
34
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in which an alternative voice is given.
So when we talk about the role of the
activist today and the writer, it’s not
an innovation. In Africa and so- called
developing countries, it is dishonestly
posited as some Western notion. I find
that not just blasphemous but crimi-
nally blasphemous. So nothing for me
has changed. We’re merely using new
instruments. We’re using cartoons,
which are a prominent feature in many
societies. We’re using plays, sketches,
guerrilla theater, living theater. And
music of course.
It’s a continuum. I always like to
stress that; nothing innovative is really
happening. It’s just that we now have
a means of communication that high-
lights the plight of writers who are
involved in this kind of activity. It’s
intrinsic to the social temperament,
which is never monolithic. Other-
wise, humanity is dead, and human-
ity doesn’t like to die. It just continues
revitalizing itself, reshaping itself in
many ways, and adjusting to specific
conditions.
What’s the difference between a to-
tally unknown young man setting him-
self on fire in Tunisia—which began the
Arab Spring in that particular nation,
where dissidence had begun earlier—
and, apart from the intensity of the
consequences for the individual, the
woman in Egypt who bared her bosom
on the Internet in protest? The Egyp-
tian woman was saying, “Okay, you say
there is liberation, but we, the women,
we don’t feel it. We’re still subjected to
these discriminatory and humiliating
conditions as human beings.” And so
she bared all, at least down to her waist,
posted it deliberately on the Internet.
That’s her form of protest. The other
one set himself on fire. During the
suffragette agitation, women chained
themselves to railings in front of West-
minster. Society always finds a way,
even in the crassest and most hermetic
seizure of society, of saying there’s an
alternative. So I don’t see any differ-
ence at all in the way today’s writer
confronts unacceptable situations in
his or her own society.
Gates: What is your explanation for
the sudden burst of creativity by Af-
rican women writers? Are we in a
renaissance?
Soyinka: It’s a phenomenon. It really is
very heartwarming. But let me narrate
something that happened in Nigeria.
Some years after the civil war, some-
body told me, there was a meeting of
the Igbo ethnic organization called the
Ohanaeze, in which a decision was made
about how to reposition the Igbo people,
enable them to recover from the trauma
and devastation of the civil war, in short,
catapult them to the preeminent posi-
tion that they had had in the nation.2
2
The Igbo are one of the three larg-
est ethnic groups in Nigeria, and the
Ohanaeze Ndigbo, founded in 1976,
represents all Igbo, inside and outside
the country. Its leadership is partly
democratically elected, and decisions
by the leadership are expected to be
observed by all Ndigbo. Often, other
Nigerians learn that the Ohanaeze
has met only after its decisions are
made public. It is not uncommon for
such decisions to be contested. Most
of the ethnic groups have similar
organizations—Afenifere for the Yo-
ruba, Arewa for the Hausa, etc.
And they decided that they were going all. Even if you’re going to do that, you
to start concentrating on the education should proceed as you do normally for
of their women, and that the men for literature. You want to take the lyrics
a change should tackle the economic out of the music and say this is litera-
fortunes of the Igbo. They were to go ture also, in spite of its being in the mu-
out and trade and do business, to raise sical mode? Then you must apply the
funds for this economic resurgence, same stringent standards, and I do not
and their women must go to school; believe that those standards were ap-
in other words, reverse the traditional plied. I look at the list of poets who’ve
position. been nominated in the past. I compare
Now this was told to me confidentially their work with the lyrics of Bob Dylan,
by a very reliable Igbo. The women who and it is ridiculous.
traditionally had occupied the lower
rungs of society—they suddenly felt Gates: You’ve been coming to the
energized intellectually, creatively. United States for almost sixty years.
This, I suspect, in turn then created Do you experience racism here?
emulation among that generation of
women in Nigeria, especially in the Soyinka: I’m largely protected. People
in our position, I think we’re largely
Njideka Akunyili Crosby/Victoria Miro/David Zwirner
protected from it, but we encounter nar-
ratives of ongoing racism. Occasionally
we feel it also. I was speaking recently
to the former secretary-general of the
Commonwealth who reminded me of
certain details I’d forgotten about my
own experience, my own fight against
racism. He reminded me of the circum-
stances when I ended up integrating
that swimming pool in Atlanta around
1962, I believe. I think the motel was
called Atlanta Americana. It was quite
a violent confrontation, and I have
been comparing that personal experi-
ence with today’s sociology of racism in
the United States, and there’s no ques-
tion that enormous strides have been
made.
The black revolution has not been
for nothing, and I don’t want people
to be as negative as that, but it’s always
Njideka Akunyili Crosby: a shock when you witness American
‘The Beautyful Ones’ Series #4, 2015; society succumbing to attempts to re-
from a recent exhibition of Akunyili Crosby’s instate that execrable mentality. The
work at the National Portrait Gallery, number of unarmed black people who
London are shot by the police, the generation
of “I can’t breathe,” the shooting of
west. It’s the only explanation I have. that young man, Trayvon Martin, the
That’s why I tend to believe this story, killer acquitted in a court. There was
because of the sparkle in women’s cre- a motion—I hate to use the word, but
ativity, the cultural entrepreneurship— I’m sorry—that was a motion toward
the visual arts also, the magazines, the lynching days, only by a different
journals that have been launched by methodology. It was within this context
Igbo women, and so on. There have that an aspirant to the highest office in
been some novels of very good quality. the United States was elected, despite
his racist rhetoric.
Gates: Do you have any favorites?
Gates: So what you’re saying is Amer-
Soyinka: One thing I’ve learned, espe- ica at its best elected Obama, but some-
cially in that country called Nigeria, is how the reaction to America at its best
never to mention any favorites. was to elect America at its worst?
Gates: I knew you’d say that. [Laugh- Soyinka: That’s right. I mean, I didn’t
ter] But the energy reminds me of expect any different, and I was just
the energy of your generation at surprised that the American elector-
independence. ate didn’t seem prepared for it, and so
every day there’s a new shock. Every
Soyinka: It’s a similar outburst of day a new alarm. And I know that even
creativity. those who elected Trump will be ask-
ing themselves, what on earth did we
Gates: Were you surprised when the think we were doing? I’m sorry, but I’m
Swedish Academy named Bob Dylan a not going to offer my solutions because
laureate? I don’t have any.
Soyinka: Yes, I was surprised, and at the Gates: What is Trump’s fascination
beginning I had a sort of mixed reac- with Putin? How do you explain this?
tion toward it. Afterward I came down
heavily on the side of the negative. Soyinka: I have no idea. All I know is
One, compared to the music indus- that there’s a history behind all of this,
try, I believe that literature is very and one of these days, knowing the
shortchanged in terms of accessibility United States of America as I do, that
to funds, to popular recognition. Let’s secret will come out. [Laughter]
face it: the literary worker has to work
twice as hard as a music worker, espe- Gates: So is Putin the most powerful
cially pop music. I’m not talking about man in the world now?
classical music, the heavy stuff. I con-
sidered it one of those gestures: “Let’s Soyinka: All I can say is that even Putin
break the mold for the sake of break- is more believable as a leader than
ing the mold.” I wasn’t impressed at Donald Trump.
The New York Review

The Trial of the Kaiser
by William A. Schabas.
Oxford University Press,
410 pp., $34.95
Kaiser Wilhelm II was an emblem of
his era. Modern in his appreciation of
the power of the media, hungry for pub-
licity and adulation, he was constantly
in the news, whether celebrating with
his royal English and Russian cousins
or inaugurating local railroad stations
and monuments. Articulate
and garrulous, the kaiser Kaiser Wilhelm II
broadcast remarks that be-
came instant catchphrases,
especially those that es-
caped the censorship of his
handlers, such as his claim
that “the ruler’s will is the
public law” or his favorable
comparison of German sol-
diers to “Huns.” His ubiq-
uity earned him the name
“Reise-Kaiser” (the travel-
ing emperor). He was also
impetuous, flighty, and hard
to control—“Wilhelm der
Plötzliche” (Wilhelm the
Sudden). Even his aggres-
sively upright mustache ac-
quired an epithet: “Es ist
erreicht!” (It is achieved!)
On June 28, 1914,
Bosnian- Serb students who
chafed at Austria’s repres-
sion of Serbian nationalism
in its empire assassinated
the heir to the Austrian
throne, Archduke Franz
Ferdinand. Wilhelm re-
sponded to the death of
his royal friend by press-
ing for war. Two days later,
he noted in the margin
of a diplomatic telegram
that it was “now or never.”
On July 5, he assured the
Austrian ambassador that
Germany would support
Austria’s retaliation against
Serbia even if it ignited a continental
war against Serbia’s ally Russia (and
Russia’s ally France).
The kaiser’s resolution was unchar-
acteristic. In previous crises, he had
either scotched the warlike plans of
his advisers (for example during the
Moroccan Crises of 1905 and 1911) or
they had had to stir up his enthusiasm,
as in the late autumn of 1912 during
the First Balkan War. In the latter in-
stance, he eventually went beyond their
intentions, demanding in effect a world
war, but then pulled back when naval
leaders complained that they were un-
ready to take on England.
In the July Crisis of 1914 he wavered
again, despite his initial resolve. Aus-
tria delivered a harsh ultimatum to
the Serbs that demanded vast inter-
ference in Serbian domestic affairs. It
was designed to be rejected and thus
offer cover for an Austrian invasion.
Serbia’s clever reply seemed to submit
to the terms with a few reservations.
The kaiser then declared on July 28
that “all ground for war has vanished.”
Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann
Hollweg and Chief of the General Staff
Helmuth von Moltke manipulated the
reluctant monarch back to bellicos-
ity. Without royal approval, Germany
March 21, 2019
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Hang the Kaiser?
Isabel V. Hull
could not have begun the war. On the
first anniversary of its outbreak, when
Germany was mired in stalemate de-
spite its use of poison gas and unre-
stricted submarine warfare, Wilhelm
said, “I did not want the war.”
It did not matter. Foreign opinion,
high and low, held the kaiser responsi-
ble for German militarism and aggres-
sion. The first serious call to put him on
trial was published as early as October
1914 by an anonymous writer in The
Edinburgh Review. By 1918, the idea
of a trial was so commonplace that, as
the armistice neared, French president
Georges Clemenceau commissioned
a report from two University of Paris
law professors on the Kaiser’s legal re-
sponsibility for aggressive war, treaty
violations, and breaking the laws of
war. The British Cabinet set up a Com-
mittee of Enquiry into Breaches of the
Laws of War, which similarly included
aggressive war and treaty violation.
Five days before the armistice, At-
torney General Frederick E. Smith of
Britain told the committee, “Our own
view is that an aggressive War was
forced upon the world by an ambi-
tious and unscrupulous power, and that
the challenge so developed involved
the whole future of the Public Law of
States.” He summarized what he took
to be the German view: “Inasmuch
as international law has no sanctions
which it can apply to the conqueror, it is
a matter of the most complete indiffer-
ence to us whether . . .we have broken
international law or not.” But Germany
had not conquered. The Allies had
won; they had fought, Smith said, “for
the purpose of re- establishing the au-
thority of international law.” The task
now was to restore it.
None embraced that challenge more
wholeheartedly than Clemenceau and
British prime minister David Lloyd
George. Both shared the conviction that
Kaiser Wilhelm was guilty of launching
an aggressive war, breaking the treaties
guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium
and Luxembourg, and presiding over
military conduct that amounted to “ter-
rorism,” a term referring to actions such
as the massacre of almost five thousand
civilians in Belgium and northern
France, the unlimited ex-
ploitation of occupied zones
and their inhabitants, unre-
stricted submarine warfare
that targeted neutral ship-
ping and hospital ships, and
other operations covered
under the excuse of “mili-
tary necessity.” In their
view, all these were inter-
national crimes for which
the kaiser could and should
be held legally responsible.
Indeed, Lloyd George was
reelected in December 1918
under the popular slogan
“Hang the Kaiser.” Italy’s
prime minister, Vittorio
Emanuele Orlando, was
less certain. But the main
obstacle proved to be the
United States.
William Schabas, the
author of The Trial of the
Kaiser, is an expert on in-
ternational criminal law.
He shares the view common
among international law-
yers and international rela-
tions theorists that Lloyd
George and Clemenceau
were mistaken, and that at
the time neither aggressive
war nor breaking treaties
was a crime under interna-
tional law. They were in-
stead political offenses that
had hitherto been handled
politically, for example by
imposing reparations on the offending
nation or taking some of its territory in
compensation. If the Allies went ahead
and tried the kaiser, they would be ap-
plying ex post facto laws. They would
also break a long tradition holding that
no ruler could be tried before a foreign
court. What sort of court should have
jurisdiction? The Trial of the Kaiser fo-
cuses on how contemporaries tried to
solve these legal “riddles.”
The least difficult issue was the immu-
nity of a head of state. Before Wood-
row Wilson arrived in Europe for the
Paris Peace Conference, Lloyd George,
Clemenceau, and Orlando (after some
hesitation) had already agreed that Wil-
helm must be tried for “being the crimi-
nal mainly responsible for the War and
the breaches of international law” com-
mitted by German forces. The fact that
both Britain and France had in previous
centuries tried and executed their kings
made the step easier for them to take.
US secretary of state Robert Lan-
sing, however, was horrified. Lan-
sing, an international lawyer, chaired
the Commission on the Responsibil-
ity of the Authors of the War and on
Enforcement of Penalties, which was
charged with resolving the legal issues
and language of the Treaty of Ver-
sailles. He argued strongly for the im-
munity of sovereigns from prosecution
in foreign courts.
France’s representative, Ferdinand
Larnaude, a professor of public law at
the University of Paris and one of the
authors of Clemenceau’s report, replied
that Lansing had confused the immunity
that rulers might enjoy before domes-
tic courts with the obligation that state
leaders owed to the international com-
munity. Greece’s representative added
that trying the kaiser before an inter-
national rather than a national court
should solve that problem. And besides,
if the indictment were included in the
Versailles Treaty, Germany’s signature
would mean that it had agreed to the
trial, thus waiving whatever immunity
might still attach to the royal personage.
The commission’s final report stated
flatly that “there is no reason why rank,
however exalted, should in any circum-
stances protect the holder of it from re-
sponsibility. . . . This extends even to the
case of Heads of States.” Article 227
of the Versailles Treaty thus “publicly
arraign[ed]” the kaiser and called for an
international tribunal to try him.
An international tribunal already
existed. The Permanent Court of Ar-
bitration had been established at the
1899 Hague Peace Conference, which
had codified the laws of war, but it was
not a criminal court, and states submit-
ted their disputes to it only voluntarily.
Thus it seemed unsuitable as a venue
for a high criminal trial. In March 1916
a French deputy had already suggested
establishing an international court for
postwar trials. An international crimi-
nal court of this magnitude, however,
was unprecedented (which is why Lan-
sing opposed it), and it raised many
questions. Whose representatives would
sit on it? What procedures and rules of
evidence would it follow? What sanc-
tions could it apply?
The French report commissioned by
Clemenceau had argued that the Al-
lies and Associated Powers (Britain,
France, Italy, Japan, and the United
States), not the defeated Central Pow-
ers or any neutral party, should appoint
the judges for two reasons: first, they
were the “tacit mandatories” of the
small states that German hegemony
had threatened to swallow up and that
were too weak to defend themselves,
and, second, the wartime alliance was
the only organized international com-
munity that existed until a proper
League of Nations could be estab-
lished. It left the procedure and sanc-
tions to the judgment of the court.
The final version of Article 227 fol-
lowed these recommendations. In a
very interesting section on the actual
preparations for the trial, Schabas
criticizes the Allies (chiefly Britain and
France) for giving so little attention to
details concerning the court’s protocol.
But in 1945 the International Military
Tribunal at Nuremberg proceeded in
much the same way: it excluded both
neutral and German judges, it set its
own procedures and rules of evidence,
and it observed its own Charter as the
law. Its great advantage was that it was
following a path already traversed in
1919 and—a significant difference—it
35

had both the defendants and, more im-
portant, the incriminating documents
in hand.
Treaty violation was enormously
important to statesmen in 1919, yet
their concern had less of an impact on
future international law on that legal
issue than on any other. Schabas’s ac-
count does not make clear why. After
all, Imperial Germany’s breach of the
1839 treaty guaranteeing Belgian neu-
trality caused Britain to enter the war.
That treaty was signed by all the major
powers of Europe, acting as guaran-
tors, and was designed to prevent any
one of them from attaining continen-
tal hegemony by expanding at the ex-
pense of weaker, strategically located
states such as Belgium. It was there-
fore the major diplomatic and legal
security instrument of the nineteenth
century.
Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg had
admitted publicly on August 4, 1914,
that Germany’s invasion of Belgium
violated treaty law. The British attor-
ney general called the matter “an ab-
solutely clear issue,” and said that if
Germany had won the war, “public law
and the sanctity of treaties would have
disappeared in our day and our gen-
eration from the world.” What sort of
law could exist, if treaties meant noth-
ing? Even Imperial Germany had con-
templated trying Romania’s king for
breaking its treaty of alliance with the
Central Powers in 1916. The Nurem-
berg Charter followed the same logic,
listing twenty-six treaties violated by
Nazi Germany. But international crim-
inal law has not developed along these
lines. The Rome Statute (1998) of the
International Criminal Court (ICC)
does not list treaty violations among
the core international crimes.
The most enduring legal dilemma was
aggressive war. The ICC did not receive
final jurisdiction over that crime until
July 2018. The problem was defining
“aggression,” a process that stretched
from 1947 to 2010, when nations finally
agreed that aggression was “the use of
armed force by a State against the sov-
ereignty, territorial integrity or politi-
cal independence of another State, or
in any other manner inconsistent with
the Charter of the United Nations,”
and that persons in political authority
could be tried for it.
In stark contrast to the post–World
War II era, no one in 1919 was con-
cerned with the definition of aggres-
sive war. Everyone knew it when they
saw it, and all, including Wilson, were
convinced that Germany had launched
one. Moreover, everyone described
it as a “crime.” But they disagreed on
how to define a crime in international
law; that was the heart of the matter,
and it is the basic question posed in
Schabas’s book. There were essentially
three positions.
The first was Lansing’s rigid positiv-
ism, based firmly on domestic law. He
cited a US Supreme Court opinion of
1812 that for a crime to exist, a legisla-
ture had first to make “an act a crime,
affix a punishment to it, and declare
the court that shall have jurisdiction of
the offence.” For Lansing, “what is true
of the American States must be true of
this looser union which we call the So-
ciety of Nations.”
The classic view of criminal law since
at least the eighteenth century was “no
crime, no penalty, without law” (nul-
36
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lum crimen, nulla poena sine lege).
Positivism, the dominant legal doctrine
of the nineteenth century, demanded
more: “without previously written law.”
Because nullum crimen protects the
rights of defendants against arbitrary
state overreach, it is the fundamental
tenet of legality. Nowadays, after de-
cades of codification of international
law, its strictures can more easily be
met. But in 1919 not even the laws of
war contained specific sentences or
named courts to handle the offenses
listed in the Hague Convention of 1899.
It was therefore possible in 1919 for a
person acting in an official capacity to
violate international law, yet not to have
committed a “crime” in the positivist
sense endorsed by Lansing. If such a
person—say, the kaiser—were put on
trial, then he would be tried ex post
facto. This was the central American
complaint regarding all the legal issues,
whether of aggressive war, treaty vio-
lation, immunity for heads of state, or
the international tribunal: they would
all operate “retroactively,” as Wilson
complained to Lloyd George.
Fulfilling the nullum crimen standard
of legality was extremely difficult for
international law in 1919, for only one
of its sources (treaties or conventions)
was in fact written. The main source,
customary international law (CIL), was
not; it derived from consistent state
practice understood by statesmen and
diplomats as obligatory. CIL was very
like the common law with its pragmatic,
but unwritten, development through
time. It was thus easiest for Great Brit-
ain, a common law state, to argue the
second position: regardless of the lack
of written law or an already- existing
tribunal, the case was “justiciable by
the settled opinion of these fourteen,
fifteen or sixteen States which are now
engaged at the Peace Conference”; “it
is right we should bring to trial those
who are responsible for such uncon-
scionable breaches of the principles of
humanity,” as Solicitor General Ernest
Pollock reasoned. It is remarkable that
Britain’s representatives did not make
the stronger arguments based on state
practice since the Congress of Vienna,
which—with the exception of the wars
of Italian and German unification, rec-
ognized as just under the principle of
self-determination—had avoided all
Great Power conflicts on the European
continent since 1815, and on the strong
expectation of international mediation
by the Concert of Europe. Perhaps
they found their interpretation too ob-
viously true.
The French argued the third posi-
tion. The report commissioned by Cle-
menceau struck out into new territory.
It declared, “A new international law
has been born” out of the facts of the
war and had been “anticipated in in-
ternational custom.” It reminded read-
ers of just war theory, “too forgotten
today . . .which did not hesitate to pun-
ish most harshly the makers of unjust
wars.” It noted that Kaiser Wilhelm
had seized every opportunity to brag
about his own power, and even quoted
some of his more notorious speeches.
The report argued that nullum crimen
was appropriate for domestic law but
must bend for large political crimes,
“in order to adapt to the exceptional
circumstances of public law.”
Clemenceau, the only nonlawyer
among his fellow statesmen at the
Council of Four (which also included
Wilson, Orlando, and Lloyd George),
took the report’s argument to its final
conclusion: the Treaty of Versailles
should make new law based on the re-
quirements of the international com-
munity. “Civilization,” he argued, “is
the organization of human responsi-
bilities . . . . We now have the perfect
opportunity to take the principle of
responsibility, which is at the basis of
national law, and transpose it into in-
ternational law.” The treaty writers,
he said, “will share in the glory of
something unprecedented—I readily
acknowledge—by establishing inter-
national justice,” which until now had
“existed only in books. Finally, we will
make it a reality.” Orlando embraced
Clemenceau’s views “because they
raise us above the legal technicalities.
Bettmann/Getty Images
David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau,
and Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace
Conference, circa 1919
It is history that is taking place. It is
no longer law. If we consult the codes,
we will have great difficulty in finding
there what we seek.”
Nevertheless, the United States
stood firm. The pattern was always
the same: Britain, France, and other
powers argued for criminal trials; the
United States refused; the other pow-
ers weakened (often for practical, not
legal reasons) and finally gave in. Wil-
son arranged a “compromise” that pro-
duced the odd wording of Article 227,
which “publicly arraign[ed] William
II of Hohenzollern, formerly German
Emperor, for a supreme offence against
international morality and the sanctity
of treaties”—morality, not law. The
Allied reply to Germany’s law-laden
rejoinder, which found Article 227 de-
void of “any legal basis,” denied that
the treaty had a “juridical character
as regards its substance, but only [did
so] in its form.” That is, the treaty had
poured politics into legal form.
Even so, the Netherlands, where the
Kaiser had fled after Germany’s col-
lapse in November 1918, rejected Al-
lied requests for his extradition on the
ground that Article 227 violated the
rule against retroactive punishment. A
quixotic attempt by several rogue US
officers to kidnap him netted only a
stolen ashtray embossed with the royal
coat of arms “adorned with a pipe-
smoking dog that bore the monogram
‘W. I.,’ presumably meaning ‘Wilhelm
Imperator.’” No international trial of
the kaiser was ever held.
Schabas has done meticulous re-
search among the unpublished archival
records of this titanic legal struggle.
Unfortunately he does not reference
the historiographical literature, so
readers will not learn from his book
how historians have interpreted the ne-
gotiations and effects of the Versailles
Treaty. He is also agnostic about the
facts (did Germany wage an aggres-
sive war?) and seemingly even about
whether aggressive war violated in-
ternational law (even if it was not a
“crime” in the domestic sense).*
Nevertheless, Schabas agrees with
much recent historiography that has
positively reevaluated the enduring
importance of Versailles, despite its
immediate failure to prosecute public
officials. He writes that “with the ex-
ception of the Charter of the United
Nations, the Treaty of Versailles . . .was
the most important international con-
vention of the twentieth century.” The
treaty gave legal recognition to the new
state borders of Europe, and it set down
broad rules governing international
state conduct, both in the reasons it
gave for its treatment of the defeated
Central Powers and in the Covenant of
the League of Nations.
Its painstakingly documented list of
thirty-two separate war crimes consti-
tuted “one of the most enduring con-
tributions . . . to the development of the
laws and customs of war.” It specified
crimes against civilians (ranging from
murder and torture to rape, deporta-
tion, and forced labor), against prison-
ers of war and wounded soldiers, and
against civilian and cultural property,
and it criminalized methods of com-
bat such as poison gas, exploding bul-
lets, giving no quarter, collective fines,
sinking merchant and passenger ships
without warning, and destruction of
hospitals and hospital ships. An ICC
judge has credited the treaty with tak-
ing “the first step towards the devel-
opment of a customary international
law norm that rejects . . . immunity” for
state officials.
Schabas notes of the Council of Four
that “never before, or after, have the
leaders of the world’s most powerful
nations devoted so much time to a de-
bate about criminal law and individual
responsibility.” He chides them, rightly,
for their “amateurishness” regarding
important legal questions. But although
three of them were lawyers, all were first
and foremost political leaders trying, in
Wilson’s words, “to create the principle
and the penalty” that would safeguard
a new world order based on law. To get
there, they had to take a leap out of pos-
itivism—a leap that Wilson, for all his
idealism, refused to venture. The kaiser
remained safe in Huis Doorn, the man-
sion he purchased near the Dutch city
of Utrecht, until his death in 1941, when
the sequel to World War I was prepar-
ing the way for another American,
Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief
prosecutor for the US at Nuremberg, to
take that leap.
*That last view was the fourth posi-
tion on aggressive war, one famously
taken by Erich Kaufmann in 1911. He
wrote that “the development of power
is the essence of the state,” and only
war could prove and instantiate that es-
sence. Therefore, “in its highest formal
appearance, might and right must coin-
cide,” meaning that successful aggres-
sive war actually created law; it did not
violate it. See Kaufmann, Das Wesen
des Völkerrechts und die clausula rebus
sic stantibus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr,
1911), pp. 135, 146, 153.
The New York Review

The Uncivil War Over Schools
Ghosts in the Schoolyard:
Racism and School Closings
on Chicago’s South Side
by Eve L. Ewing.
University of Chicago Press,
222 pp., $22.50
A Political Education:
Black Politics and Education Reform
in Chicago Since the 1960s
by Elizabeth Todd-Breland.
University of North Carolina Press,
328 pp., $24.95 (paper)
How Schools Work:
An Inside Account of Failure
and Success from One of the
Nation’s Longest- Serving
Secretaries of Education
by Arne Duncan.
Simon and Schuster, 243 pp., $26.99
’63 Boycott
a documentary film directed
by Gordon Quinn
In 2012 Chicago public school teachers
went on strike. They aimed not just to
improve their wages and hours but to
stalemate the reform agenda of Mayor
Rahm Emanuel, who wanted to re-
place underperforming neighborhood
schools with charter schools, lengthen
the school day, and tie teacher salaries
to students’ scores on standardized
tests. Even for Chicago, a city noted for
bare-knuckle politics, it was a bruising
battle. At a City Hall meeting the previ-
ous year with Chicago Teachers Union
president Karen Lewis, who brusquely
rebuffed his plea for the longer school
day, the famously foulmouthed mayor
had replied with a tart rebuke of his
own: “Fuck you, Lewis.”
In the buildup to the strike, Lewis
branded Emanuel—a former chief of
staff for President Barack Obama—“a
liar and a bully.” She also denounced
Arne Duncan, who had served as
school superintendent in Chicago be-
fore Obama appointed him as sec-
retary of education in 2009. In one
especially sour moment, Lewis even
mocked Duncan’s apparent lisp. “This
guy who has the nerve to stand up and
say, ‘Education is the thivil rights ithue
of our time.’” Lewis said. “You know
he went to private school because if he
had gone to public school he’d have had
that lisp fixed.”1
There’s an astonishing lack of civility
in the war over our schools, which are
supposed to teach young people how
to debate their differences in a civil
manner. And in urban America, it’s
mainly a civil war among Democrats.
Chicago is a one-party town, like most
big cities, but it’s riven by bitter divi-
sions over charter schools, merit pay,
and other hallmarks of contemporary
education reform. Obama stood on the
sidelines during the strike, remaining
neutral even though he had supported
charters and merit pay since his days
as a community organizer in the city.
1
Jason Zengerle, “Rahm Emanuel’s Top
Nemesis Just Might Take Him On,” The
New Republic, July 14, 2014; Ben Gold-
berger, “Karen Lewis, Street Fighter,”
Chicago Magazine, October 2, 2012.
March 21, 2019
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Jonathan Zimmerman
Meanwhile, the teachers who merci-
lessly lambasted Emanuel and Duncan
mostly gave Obama a free pass.
That’s because of race, which runs
through our educational civil war like
a bloody river. Obama’s color surely
insulated him from charges of racism,
which the sociologist Eve L. Ewing, au-
thor of Ghosts in the Schoolyard, sees
as the driving force behind a spate of re-
cent school closings in Chicago. It also
protects him from attacks like those
from the historian Elizabeth Todd-
Breland, who in A Political Education:
Black Politics and Education Reform
Protesters against public school closings, Chicago, 2013; from the film ’63 Boycott
in Chicago Since the 1960s unfavor-
ably compares “neoliberal” reformers
with community-based black activists
seeking self- determination through ed-
ucation. At the start of her book, Todd-
Breland notes that the heavily black,
brown, and female makeup of a pro-
union protest during the 2012 teach-
ers’ strike made it look like a rally for
Obama’s presidential reelection cam-
paign of the same year. But Obama and
the teachers were often at loggerheads,
which is an inconvenient fact that both
Ewing and Todd-Breland overlook.
Nor is Obama mentioned in the new
documentary film ’63 Boycott, which
features powerful original footage of
a city-wide African-American student
walkout on October 22, 1963, to protest
segregated and overcrowded schools.
The film includes contemporary inter-
views with participants in the strike,
many of whom state the belief that the
recent closing of predominantly black
schools in Chicago reflects the same
racism that created segregation in the
first place. Likewise, they decry charter
schools for undermining urban educa-
tion and its largely African-American
constituency. You’d never know from
the film that charters have been champi-
oned by Obama, whose framed portrait
appears briefly—and incongruously—
during an interview in the home of a
black Chicago civil rights veteran, even
as he is denouncing Obama’s favored
educational policies as racist.
If black children kept out of their
shuttered schools are the “ghosts in
the schoolyard,” to quote Ewing’s
evocative title, Barack Obama is the
Ghost of School Reform: we know
he’s there, but he’s usually out of sight.
Why would black parents protest the
closing of their schools, Ewing asks, if anguish about schools that could not,
these schools were truly failing? It’s a or would not, deliver it to them. This
good question, and we can just as easily experience converted Obama into a
turn it around: If the effort to reform believer in charter schools—which
schools (including the closing of poorly would, theoretically, allow parents to
performing ones) is bad for African- bypass their inadequate neighborhood
Americans, why have many African- schools—and also in merit pay for
American leaders endorsed it? teachers whose students showed mea-
Supporters of reform include not just surable academic gains.
Obama but New Jersey senator Cory Both elements became part of his
Booker, who recently announced his 2009 “Race to the Top” initiative, which
candidacy for the presidency in 2020. allowed states to compete for federal
When he was mayor of Newark, Booker grants based on their embrace of his pre-
partnered with Mark Zuckerberg and ferred educational reforms. States were
other philanthropists to sharply ex- rewarded for instituting merit pay and
for removing limits on the number of
Bill Healy/Kartemquin Films
charters they allowed, and also for es-
tablishing “college- and career-ready”
standards. For all practical purposes,
that meant adopting the “Common
Core” guidelines, which aimed to es-
tablish a shared set of academic expec-
tations across American schools.
It also meant that more schools would
be deemed “failing”—and would even-
tually be closed—if they proved unable
to raise student test scores. Serving
some of America’s poorest children,
urban schools were at the greatest risk
of being shuttered. Sometimes a closed
school was reconstituted as a differ-
ent public school in the same building;
sometimes it was replaced by a nearby
charter school, privately operated but
funded by public dollars; sometimes
there was nothing at all in its stead, re-
quiring parents to find schools outside
their neighborhoods as well as trans-
pand charter schools in the city. He portation to get their children there.
became a hero in reform circles but a Echoing Obama, some Democrats in-
villain to teachers’ unions, which see sisted that reformers stay the course.
charters as a drain on neighborhood Without high-stakes tests of student
public schools and an attack on the achievement, they asked, how can
labor movement (most charter schools schools be held accountable?
are not unionized). But others hoped for a new kind of
Booker tweeted out his support in calculus that would acknowledge what
January for striking teachers in Los underserved communities actually
Angeles, endorsing their demands for wanted: a traditional neighborhood
higher pay and lower class sizes. But public school, with sufficient resources
he was silent about the union’s call to fund playgrounds, librarians, and
for a moratorium on charter schools, the other features that are standard in
which remain the major (if not al- more affluent areas. Schools that radi-
ways acknowledged) battlefield in the cally underperform by every numeri-
Democrats’ civil war over education. cal measure often remain popular with
In the mayoral election after Booker parents, Ewing reminds us in Ghosts
departed for the Senate, Newark’s in the Schoolyard, because “a school’s
majority-black voters chose the vocal value is about much more than num-
charter critic Ras Baraka over Shavar bers.” In the US, schools have always
Jeffries, who now directs a staunchly been the most important public institu-
pro- charter group called Democrats tion in community life. So if you tell a
for Education Reform. Both sides in group of citizens that their school has
this dispute want more resources for failed, you’re also telling them that they
public schools, but they differ strongly have failed, and that they don’t deserve
in their views of how the resources assistance of any kind.
should be distributed and how the That accounts for the bad blood in cit-
schools should be run. ies like Chicago, where Emanuel closed
nearly fifty schools just a year after the
teachers’ strike. Ewing points out that
In his autobiography Dreams from My of the students affected by the closures,
Father (1995), Barack Obama recalled 88 percent were black; meanwhile, 71
the dismal state of Chicago public percent of the shuttered schools had a
schools in the 1980s, when he lived and majority-black faculty. None of this was
worked in the city: crumbling build- lost on African-American students,
ings, low graduation rates, and bloated teachers, or parents, who condemned
bureaucracies. But Obama found that the closing of their schools as an overtly
the biggest problems were the teach- bigoted act. “I feel like this is so rac-
ers and principals, who defended the ist of y’all to close down all these CPS
status quo by making excuses. The schools,” a middle school student told a
students were lazy and unruly, educa- public hearing. “It’s taking away educa-
tors said, and their parents didn’t care. tion from them when you closing their
By contrast, Obama saw communities schools down and you movin’ them into
that were desperate for education and new schools and you takin’ them out of
37
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they comfort zone and you takin’ jobs
from teachers.”
Other students said that “the schools
were closed because we’re black and
we were failing all our tests,” as their
teacher told Ewing; in the era of high-
stakes testing, Chicago’s children obvi-
ously know about their low academic
performance and its consequences for
their schools. But to most of the people
whom Ewing quotes, this isn’t really
a question of academics at all. In the
book’s most chilling remark, a for-
mer principal likens school closings to
slave auctions. “I’m, like, begging you
to keep my family together,” she told
a hearing, between sobs. “Don’t take
them and separate them.”
Ewing discounts the “quantitative re-
ality” put forth by Emanuel and other
reformers. She instead en-
dorses community critics who
pointed to “another reality”
to explain why their schools
were closed: racism. But she
isn’t shy about invoking her
own quantitative statistics in
the case against school clos-
ings: for example, she notes
that test scores plummeted
in schools after districts an-
nounced plans to close them,
and that students’ scores
didn’t rise when they relo-
cated afterward.
Ewing is deeply attuned to
differences across races in
Chicago, but she’s much less
concerned with differences
within them, and she doesn’t Dawoud Bey: Theresa, South Shore High School, Chicago, IL, 2003; in the language of individual
seriously examine diverse from Bey’s ‘Class Pictures’ series. The photograph appears
perceptions about schools
within the black community.
For example, national surveys
reveal strong support among African-
Americans for charter schools. But
Ewing presents blacks in South Chi-
cago as heavily opposed to charters,
which suggests a bias in her sample of
informants. She also tends to take her
subjects’ observations about racism at
face value. Everyone who perceives
racism is assumed to be a victim of it,
no matter what other forces are in play.
And everyone charged with racism is
viewed as a perpetrator of it. Leaders
atop the Chicago school system “don’t
care about African American commu-
nities,” parents tell Ewing. “They don’t
care if we get an education.”
Did Chicago school officials—
including African-American ones—
really regard black communities with
such disdain? Ewing says that’s the
wrong question, because racism isn’t
a matter of belief at all. It’s a system
of power, designed to maintain the
oppression and subjugation of black
people. She compares it to a merry-go-
round, which determines the position
of each horse no matter who rides it. It’s
a strangely robotic and bloodless meta-
phor, especially for a book that pays
such careful attention to individual ex-
periences. Drawing upon community
hearings and extensive personal inter-
views, Ewing repeatedly demonstrates
how her subjects perceived school clos-
ings as racist; but at the same time, she
insists that racism isn’t a question of
perception but rather of unequal out-
comes: school closings disproportion-
ately affect black students and inhibit
their learning. So, if another scholar
were to show that students’ test scores
rose after their schools closed, would
Ewing temper her claim about the rac-
ism of the policy?
38
I doubt it. Despite her insistence that
racism isn’t a question of belief, her ar-
gument that the school closings were
racist ultimately rests on the beliefs of
African-Americans on the South Side
of Chicago. The people she interviews
think that the school closings were
racist, and we should listen closely to
them. But we condescend to them when
we place their beliefs beyond critique,
as if the victims of Chicago’s wrongful
educational history can never be wrong
themselves.
I n A Political Education, Elizabeth
Todd-Breland recounts that educational
history in vivid detail, starting with the
1963 school boycott. African-American
students and teachers staged several
in his new book, Seeing Deeply, published by
University of Texas Press.
more citywide boycotts after that, fo-
cused especially on overcrowding in
all-black schools. Rather than allow-
ing black children to attend whites-
only schools, which were much less
cramped, school superintendent Ben-
jamin Willis relocated thousands of
African-Americans to portable class-
room trailers. These “Willis Wagons”
became a symbol of racial inequality in
Chicago and a spur for black demands
for school integration, which African-
Americans said would relieve over-
crowding and give their children access
to the better educational resources that
whites commanded. But resistance in
white neighborhoods—and, eventually,
white flight to the suburbs—killed that
dream a few short years after it began.
Then came school reform, which
Todd-Breland casts as a product less of
racism than of neoliberalism. This term
has become something of a cliché in
progressive political circles, signifying
everything from free-market capital-
ism to government austerity.2 In Todd-
Breland’s book, it connotes “policies
premised on market-based principles
of competition, privatization, charter
school expansion, and a reliance on
standardized testing.” To her credit,
she acknowledges that the neoliberal
project drew bipartisan as well as
multiracial support: in Obama’s first
year in the White House, for example,
his administration engaged the strange
bedfellows Al Sharpton and Newt Gin-
grich to campaign together on behalf of
his Race to the Top initiative.
2
See Daniel Rodgers, “The Uses and
Abuses of ‘Neoliberalism,’” Dissent,
Winter 2018.
But in Todd-Breland’s telling, the
neoliberal reform tradition has always
stood in tension with what she calls
“Black self-determination.” As the in-
tegrationist dream stumbled in the late
1960s, African-Americans in Chicago
sought to develop their own educa-
tional institutions. Some created pri-
vate schools, often with Pan-African
themes; others worked with neighbor-
hood organizations to develop public
schools under “community control,”
which aimed to wrest power from the
mostly white bureaucrats who sat atop
the city school system. Buoyed by cre-
ative leaders and strong parent net-
works, some of the schools flourished;
others wilted and died.
Still others reorganized themselves
as charter schools in the 1990s, which
raises a challenge for Todd-
Dawoud Bey
Breland’s interpretation: How
could a school with roots in
the black tradition of self-
determination that she ad-
mires embrace the neoliberal
reform that she rejects? Part of
the answer lay in the resources
that taxpayer-supported char-
ters promised; if charters were
“the game in town,” one cash-
strapped black school leader
reasoned, “then we need to
get a piece of the action.” But
the price has been a dilution
of black self- determination,
Todd-Breland argues, which
has been “co- opted” by neo-
liberalism and “repurposed”
achievement rather than col-
lective racial uplift. She con-
cludes her book with a ringing
call to rediscover the older
radical spirit, which can reconnect
African-Americans to their communi-
ties and reshape their schools around
black pride and purpose.
Todd-Breland finds the radical spirit
alive and well in the 2012 teachers’ strike
as well as in the 2013 protests against
Emanuel’s school closings. She also sees
traces of it in the national Movement
for Black Lives, which demanded a
moratorium on charter schools in 2016.
But Todd-Breland fails to note that the
same demand led to the defection of
several prominent Black Lives leaders,
who believed that charters could em-
power black parents and communities.
“I think it’s our job as education re-
formers, as people who are fighting for
educational justice, to engage the com-
munity, to engage our parents and to
make sure they have the best informa-
tion,” declared Rashad Anthony Turner,
who stepped down from his Black Lives
leadership position in Minnesota after
the organization’s charter moratorium.
“Because I don’t believe that any parent
on the face of this Earth would say that
they shouldn’t be in control, or be able to
choose, where their child goes to school.”
The alternative, he said, was to make
students “continue to suffer” in their cur-
rent neighborhood schools, where “you
might be one of the 70 percent of kids
who can’t read at the end of third grade.”3
D espite their insistence on the impor-
tance of listening to black voices, Ewing
3
Beth Hawkins, “In-Depth: Black
Lives Matter’s Rashad Turner on Why
He’s Quitting Over Charter School At-
tacks,” The 74, September 18, 2016.
The New York Review
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and Todd-Breland don’t pay much at-
tention to voices like Rashad Turner’s.
For pro- charter views you need to con-
sult Arne Duncan’s recent memoir,
How Schools Work, which traces his
rise from Chicago’s South Side to being
the head of the city’s public school sys-
tem and ultimately secretary of educa-
tion in the Obama administration, from
2009 to 2015. Duncan—a cheerful and
unrepentant champion of school re-
form—grew up just a few blocks from
some of the closed schools described by
Ewing. As he readily admits, he came
from a much more privileged back-
ground than most of Ewing’s subjects:
his father taught at the University of
Chicago, where Duncan attended the
university’s elite (and mostly white)
Laboratory School. But he routinely
interacted with African-Americans,
either by playing basketball on local
courts (Duncan eventually played pro
ball in Australia) or by tutoring at a
South Side children’s center run by his
mother, where Duncan learned about
the low- quality education provided by
many of the city’s public schools.
When Duncan took over as schools
chief in Chicago in 2001, just half of en-
tering ninth-graders in the city gradu-
ated high school; only a quarter of
those graduates were ready for college;
and only half of those ready for college
would complete it. So of one hundred
high school freshmen, six were likely
to graduate from college; among black
and Latino freshmen, only three would
do so. Nationwide, the news was simi-
larly dismal: half of black and Latino
students graduated from high school,
and between a half and a third of those
graduates were ready for college.
As Duncan proudly notes, his efforts
to reward successful schools—and to
close lower-performing ones—led to
higher graduation rates and remark-
able test-score gains: by 2018, Chi-
cago schoolchildren between third
and eighth grade were improving at a
faster rate than students in 96 percent
of American schools. Yet nearly three
fourths of eighth graders in the city
still aren’t proficient in math and read-
ing, according to the National Assess-
ment of Educational Progress: despite
their accelerated rates of improvement,
many children start so far behind that
they can’t catch up. Meanwhile, Dun-
can never mentions the large body of
research suggesting that test-based in-
centives don’t enhance student learn-
ing in the long run. Most prominently,
a rigorous 2011 study by the National
Academy of Sciences—examining na-
tionwide data over nine years—found
little consistent effect of standardized
testing upon academic achievement.
You’d think that a guy who is so
wedded to data—a recurring theme in
Duncan’s book—would at least men-
tion this study. But in the battle over
school reform, every side invokes re-
search that buttresses its viewpoint and
downplays research that doesn’t. Near
the end of her own book, Todd-Breland
states flatly that charter school students
“have not consistently performed over-
whelmingly better than students in
traditional public schools.” But a 2015
Stanford study found that black stu-
dents in charter schools gained the test-
score equivalent of thirty-six extra days
of math learning and twenty-six extra
days of reading per year, compared to
peers of similar background in regular
public schools. That’s hardly the last
word on a subject that continues to gen-
erate new research and debate. But it’s
disingenuous for Todd-Breland, Dun-
can, or Ewing to pretend that the re-
search speaks with a single voice, when
they know full well that it does not.
We live in a cynical age. And it’s the
height of cynicism to imagine that your
side is defending “the kids” while the
other side is deliberately neglecting
them. The basic faith of liberal democ-
racy is that equally informed people
can reason from the same set of facts
to different conclusions. But in the
uncivil war over schools—which, it’s
worth restating, are supposed to teach
future citizens that liberal faith—we
seem to have abandoned it. If you want
to test minority students and hold their
schools accountable, you risk being
called a racist who seeks to keep them
mired in oppression; if you oppose
such measures and want to keep your
neighborhood school open, you may be
denounced as a union shill who puts
adult interests ahead of the kids. But
how will our children learn to deliber-
ate their differences in a civil manner if
the adults in the room can’t, or won’t?
The problem here isn’t neoliberalism;
it’s illiberalism, which imagines every
political opponent as a mortal threat to
the nation. And it permeates the entire
debate over our schools, belying their
democratic premise and purpose.
Nor is it clear whether victory for
either side would make a substantial
difference in the lives of America’s
poorest children, who need much more
assistance than our political system is
willing to give them. In the recent Los
Angeles school strike, for example,
teachers won an immediate seven-
student reduction in high school math
and English classes beginning next
year. But in a city where some classes
have as many as forty-six students, it’s
unlikely that reducing class size by a
few students will improve learning. In
a landmark study in Tennessee in the
1980s, researchers demonstrated that
students in classes of between thir-
teen and seventeen children scored
significantly better on standardized
tests—and were more likely to go to
college—than students in classes of
twenty-two to twenty-six. Many Los
Angeles classes are already much bigger
than that, of course, and bringing them
down to a level that actually enhances
learning would require a huge—and, at
present, unimaginable—redistribution
of resources. In that light, debates over
charter schools and merit pay sound a
bit like moving chairs around on the
deck of the Titanic. Until we’re willing
to make large and sustained public in-
vestments in poor urban communities,
most of their public schools will con-
tinue to languish.
When Barack Obama appointed
Arne Duncan education secretary, he
instructed him to move ahead aggres-
sively on merit pay, charter schools, and
Common Core. But he also cautioned
against alienating his opponents, espe-
cially those in his own party. “Just don’t
poke the unions in the eye with this,”
Obama warned. “Let’s engage, not at-
tack.” He might have been wrong about
school reform, as Eve Ewing and Eliza-
beth Todd-Breland suggest, but he was
right about democracy. We could do
worse than to listen to him, especially
right now.

Focusing for the first time on the

post–Nobel Prize story of Boris
Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago,
Paolo Mancosu tells how Soviet pressure
forced Pasternak to rely on smuggled
royalties, how his companion and her
daughter were sent to the Gulag for
receiving them, and how Western literary
figures intervened to win their freedom.
This is a thrilling account that involves
KGB interceptions, fabricated documents,
smugglers, and much more.

Cloth: 978-0-8179-2244-3
Ebook available
hooverpress.org

March 21, 2019 39


The Happy Prince
a film written and directed
by Rupert Everett
Oscar: A Life
by Matthew Sturgis.
Head of Zeus,
890 pp., £25.00
How to perform a man who
himself did nothing else?
“From the beginning Wilde
performed his life and con-
tinued to do so even after
fate had taken the plot out
of his hands,” W. H. Auden
wrote in a perceptive, if
strikingly critical, essay
in 1963.1 Oscar Wilde fa-
mously told Gide that he
had put his talent into his
work and his genius into
his life, and although his
work is still enjoyed—
there was recently a year-
long season of his plays at
the Vaudeville Theatre in
London—he divides opin-
ion as a writer, with John
Banville in these pages re-
cently putting a higher estimate on him
than Auden had.2
But “Oscar” continues to inspire
any number of books, plays, and mov-
ies. One filmography lists twenty-seven
items. There are many filmed versions
of his work, among them six of The
Picture of Dorian Gray (with casts in-
cluding Anthony Perkins and Malcolm
McDowell), four of The Canterville
Ghost (with casts including John Giel-
gud and Patrick Stewart, and a 1944
version directed by Jules Dassin with
Charles Laughton), and four of Salomé
(one directed by Ken Russell and one
by Al Pacino). And there are filmed
versions of the comedies, although they
never quite work on screen: the 1952 Im-
portance of Being Earnest directed by
Anthony Asquith, despite Edith Evans
as Lady Bracknell, Dorothy Tutin as
Cecily, and Margaret Rutherford as
Miss Prism, is stagey and slow-paced.
An even more improbable Wildean
than Pacino was Otto Preminger, who
directed a 1949 movie version of Lady
Windermere’s Fan as The Fan.
Then there are the biopics. Two came
out in 1960: Oscar Wilde with Robert
Morley as Wilde and The Trials of
Oscar Wilde with Peter Finch. Critical
opinion at the time thought the Finch
version the better, and viewing them
again it’s hard to disagree. The for-
mer is clumsy and sometimes a little
leaden and, although there’s something
rather touching about Morley, he is
plainly miscast. So in a different way
is Finch, who is too handsome, slim,
and dashing: Wilde was never very pre-
possessing in appearance, as opposed
to presence and conversation, and by
forty he was, as photographs and the
1
“An Improbable Life,” The New
Yorker, March 9, 1963; reprinted in
The Complete Works of W. H. Auden,
Volume V: Prose: 1963–1968, edited by
Edward Mendelson (Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2015), pp. 19–36.
2 delicately around the subject, and it was
“The Impossibility of Being Oscar,”
The New York Review, March 8, 2018.
40
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‘Feasting with Panthers’
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde in The Happy Prince
sketches by Toulouse-Lautrec and Max
Beerbohm show, bloated by food and
drink.
In 1960 London also saw The Impor-
tance of Being Oscar, a one-man stage
show by Micheál Mac Liammóir. Since
mixed identities, “guising,” double
lives, and “Bunburying” were so much
a part of Wilde’s work—and life—
this may have been an apt interpreter.
“Mac Liammóir” was actually a Lon-
doner of modest origins named Alfred
Willmore, with no Irish connections
or ancestry at all. He’d been a child
actor before the Great War, appearing
in Peter Pan with his exact contempo-
rary Noël Coward, but then moved to
Dublin and entirely reinvented himself
as an Irishman, claiming to come of a
Cork family, adopting a Celtic name,
and learning to speak Gaelic fluently,
which was more than most of the Irish
could do. Although I didn’t see The Im-
portance of Being Oscar, I relished an
LP of it, with Mac Liammóir’s overripe
but enjoyable intonation of everything
from his own narrative to Lord Henry
Wotton and Lady Bracknell.
That show and those movies came
three years after the 1957 Wolfenden
Report, which had recommended the
repeal of the notorious 1885 Labouch-
ere Amendment, the law under which
Wilde had been imprisoned. Sodomy
had been a felony since the Middle
Ages, but the amendment created a
further offense of “gross indecency”
between men, of any age, in public or
in private. Not many people were “out”
sixty and more years ago, but three
witnesses, the eye surgeon Patrick
Trevor-Roper, the art historian Carl
Winter, and the journalist Peter Wilde-
blood, courageously gave evidence to
the Wolfenden committee about their
lives as homosexual men. Wildeblood
had already been involved in a famous
scandal, been imprisoned, and written
a powerful book about it, Against the
Law.
Those two 1960 movies trod quite
significant that Morley and Finch were
both heterosexual. Although the films
were based on books about Wilde and
his trials, they could not then have re-
produced verbally, let alone portrayed
visually, the evidence heard in court.
But they may have played a modest part
in the rather slow process by which the
Wolfenden recommendations became
law with the 1967 Sexual Offences Act,
which decriminalized sexual relations
between consenting adult men. And
standards changed dramatically over
the next generation: by the time of the
1997 movie Wilde, with Stephen Fry as
an improbably beatific Oscar and Jude
Law as Lord Alfred Douglas, there
were graphic scenes of “Bosie” screw-
ing rent boys that would have been im-
possible not long before.
In two films of Wilde plays, the 1999
An Ideal Husband and the 2002 Im-
portance of Being Earnest, one of the
actors is Rupert Everett. His career
had begun with Julian Mitchell’s 1981
play Another Country, set in a pre-
war English public school and loosely
inspired by Guy Burgess, the Etonian
Soviet agent. The two schoolboys at the
center of the story were played, very
impressively, by Everett and Kenneth
Branagh. Branagh’s part was taken over
later by Colin Firth, who also appeared
alongside Everett in the 1984 film ver-
sion. Since then, Everett had one brief
moment of Hollywood glory with Julia
Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding,
but there were disastrous movies with
Bob Dylan (along with a notably un-
successful attempt by Everett to turn
himself into a singer) and Madonna.
He may not have helped himself, either
by coming out (or so he thinks: “The
fact is that you could not be, and still
cannot be, a twenty-five-year-old ho-
mosexual trying to make it in the Brit-
ish film business or the American film
business”) or by publishing a mem-
oir, the disloyal, bitchy, well-written,
and highly enjoyable Red Carpets and
Other Banana Skins, with many an
aside about the shortcomings of such
Hollywood eminences as
Wilhelm Moser/Sony Pictures Classics
“Done Fadeaway.”
Meantime Firth had risen
to stellar heights, winning a
clutch of awards, five alone,
including an Oscar, for the
tongue-tied George VI in
The King’s Speech. For
years Everett had dreamed
of making a Wilde movie,
but he could only get it fi-
nanced with a bankable star,
and he approached his on-
and-off friend Firth, who at
last agreed. Firth plays Reg-
gie Turner, one of Wilde’s
intimates and one of the few
friends who stood by him
after his disgrace. It’s quite
a small part, and he doesn’t
much resemble the “dear
little Jew,” as Wilde called
Turner. Title and plot come
from Wilde’s children’s story
The Happy Prince, which
has a particular resonance
for me. When I was a small
boy I had a “talking book”
of the story, shellac discs in
an album with illustrations.
It brought tears to my eyes when I was
six, and still can a long lifetime later.
Other Wilde biopics have told, over
and again, the epic, awful story of
his downfall at the very height of his
fame in early 1895, when his one great
masterpiece, The Importance of Being
Earnest, opened on Valentine’s Day:
his helpless infatuation with Douglas;
Douglas’s blood quarrel with his father,
“the screaming scarlet marquess” Lord
Queensberry; Queensberry’s hounding
Wilde and provoking him to take an
incredibly foolish legal action; Douglas
egging him on all the time; and the trap
into which Wilde walked after enough
evidence had been collected about his
clandestine illicit life to destroy him.
There were three trials. The first
was a prosecution brought by Wilde
against Queensberry under the eso-
teric branch of English law called
criminal libel, as Oscar, Matthew St-
urgis’s new biography, reminds us. Ed-
ward Carson is always cast as a villain
for his devastating cross-examination
that ruined Wilde, and even in the
pages of The New York Review I’ve
read that Carson prosecuted Wilde.
He did not. As Wilde later wrote to
Douglas from Reading Gaol, “I am
here for having tried to put your fa-
ther in prison.” Carson was retained
as Queensberry’s defense counsel, and
when he methodically routed Wilde in
the witness box, he was doing what an
advocate is supposed to do for his cli-
ent. The collapse of the case against
Queensberry was followed by Wilde’s
arrest and two trials, the first ending
with a hung jury and the second with
conviction and imprisonment.
Instead of those too familiar events,
The Happy Prince begins with Wilde
in exile, although the narrative is dis-
tinctly nonlinear, jumping from a des-
titute Wilde in Paris cadging money
from an Englishwoman to his arrival
in France after his release, greeted
by Robert Ross (Edwin Thomas) and
Turner. Several scenes are invented.
Wilde is chased through the streets by a
baying mob of English youths, when in
The New York Review

reality he was merely, though humiliat-
ingly enough, ejected from hotels at the
demand of English tourists. In another
unlikely scene he sings for his supper,
or the price of his drinks, in a rowdy
café (Béatrice Dalle as the patronne),
with Everett playing a thoroughly di-
shevelled and decayed Wilde. The orig-
inal conceit has him telling the story of
The Happy Prince to boys in a Parisian
hovel, then flashing back to his home in
London, where he would tell the same
story to his young sons.
Watching tripe like Downton Abbey
is only made endurable by totting up
the solecisms and anachronisms, even
if this amusement soon palls. Everett’s
screenplay has enough of those, from
Ross telling Wilde that he’s a “profes-
sional masochist” to Douglas
telling him that his father was Oscar Wilde
a “groper.” This alludes to
Sir William Wilde’s reputa-
tion in Dublin for molesting
women, the subject of an-
other famous libel action. 3
And yet that word would not
have been used in the 1890s.
Nor would Wilde have said,
when Douglas complains that
he has to pay an Italian boy
for sex, “the only one who
ever fucked you for fun was
me.” One sometimes has the
impression of later admirers
projecting their own experi-
ence and language back onto
Wilde.
W e get a very different
view from Sturgis’s book.
Although sometimes a little
flat considering the high
drama it describes, it’s
thorough and informative.
He decries rather too loudly
the deficiencies of Richard
Ellmann’s 1987 life, which
has been shown to contain
numerous errors, although
Sturgis leans heavily on his predeces-
sor at many points, to the extent that
some passages in the two books are re-
markably similar. But he does provide
new detail and provoke new thoughts.
Throughout Wilde’s story the reader
or viewer often wants to shout like a
child at a pantomime: Don’t do it Oscar!
Don’t fall for the frightful Bosie, don’t
get embroiled in a squalid vendetta
inside a horrible family, don’t rise to
Queensberry’s bait, don’t bring the di-
sastrous action, and, when it collapses,
for heaven’s sake go abroad. That was
what his poor wife Constance wanted,
and what his friends Frank Harris and
George Bernard Shaw urged him to do;
that was what many people, including
Carson, hoped he would be given the
opportunity to do. After the Queens-
berry case had incriminated Wilde
himself, the warrant for his arrest was
delayed to give him time to catch a
train to the Channel ports and escape
to France, but he sat fatalistically at the
Cadogan Hotel awaiting arrest. Ever the
performer, or the self-dramatist, he told
Douglas, “I decided it was nobler and
more beautiful to stay. I did not want to
be called a coward or a deserter.”
3
See Colm Tóibín, Mad, Bad, Danger-
ous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde,
Yeats and Joyce (Scribner 2018), re-
viewed in these pages by Clair Wills,
December 20, 2018.
March 21, 2019
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And of course, when he’s released
and leaves (too late) for exile, we want
to shout: Don’t go back to Bosie! Con-
stance and his few remaining loyal
friends prayed he wouldn’t do so; but,
after the seaside sojourn with Ross and
Turner, the next episode in The Happy
Prince is all too true to life. Wilde
takes the train to Rouen, where he’s
reunited with Douglas, that “vicious,
gold-digging, snobbish, anti-Semitic,
untalented little horror for whom no
good word can be said,” in Auden’s no-
nonsense description. They then make
their way to Naples, and a bacchanal.
By contrast with the earlier movies,
which treated Douglas in a fairly neu-
tral way, plays like David Hare’s The
Judas Kiss and movies like Wilde, and
now Everett’s, have taken to portray-
ing him as possibly even more horrible
than he actually was. Here played by
Colin Morgan, Douglas behaves vilely
at every moment, insulting Wilde as a
silly snob (true enough), missing no op-
portunity to humiliate him, and then,
at the end, making a hysterical scene at
his graveside, where he tells Ross that
Oscar never loved him “as he did me.”
While Wilde wrote Ross somewhat
grandiosely that “my going back to
Bosie was psychologically inevitable,”
he added with what may have been
a kind of insight, “Of course I shall
often be unhappy, but I still love him:
the mere fact that he wrecked my life
makes me love him.” In the four years
they were together before the disas-
ter, Douglas may be reckoned Wilde’s
muse, along with the stimulation Wilde
received from “feasting with panthers,”
their folie à deux in the gay under-
world; it was in those few short years
that Wilde wrote all his best work. But
their time in exile brought no renewal,
just the wasting away of what was left of
Wilde’s life and talent.
Part of The Happy Prince takes place
in Naples (though not filmed there: Ev-
erett has given a droll account of how,
for financial reasons, it was mostly shot
in Germany and Belgium). Douglas
picks up a pretty young waiter, and
then there’s a semi-orgy with a gang
of youths. The waiter’s mother arrives
screaming with rage that she knows
something horribly immoral is taking
place, because there are surely women
lurking somewhere. When assured that
there are no women anywhere on the
premises, she breaks into sobs of relief
and blesses them all. This seems amus-
ing enough, but here we encounter
something more troubling.
At his first trial as a defendant,
Wilde gave an impassioned spontane-
ous speech, which brought tears and
cheers, about “the ‘Love that dare not
speak its name,’. . . such a great affec-
tion . . . as there was between David and
Jonathan . . . as pure as it is perfect.”
That was far from defending the physi-
cal love of men with men. Wilde had
brought the fatal action not to affirm
but to deny that he was a “Somdomite,”
as Queensberry quaintly put
it, before he perjured him-
self at length. And although
Wilde has long been ac-
claimed as a gay martyr and
hero, he needs to be treated
with care.
Between the first night
of The Importance and the
first day in court on April 3,
Wilde and Douglas escaped
from the English winter to
Algiers and, as Sturgis says,
“light, lassitude and sexual
licence.” Douglas pursued “a
beautiful ‘sugar-lipped’ four-
teen-year-old,” and Wilde
wrote to Ross, “There is
great beauty here. The Kab-
yle boys are quite lovely.”
Even the beggars were at-
tractive, “so the problem of
poverty is easily solved.” The
word to note is “poverty.”
Like many another before or
since, straight or gay, Wilde
and Douglas were sexual
tourists, and, while we look
back in horror at the histori-
cal persecution of gay men,
we should be cautious about adopting
a new double standard, and judging
more leniently a writer who bought the
bodies of penniless young boys in late-
nineteenth-century Algiers or Naples
than we would a businessman who buys
the bodies of penniless young girls in
early-twenty-first-century Bangkok or
Manila.
Woven or adapted into Everett’s
screenplay are some of Wilde’s own
lines from his letters in exile: “Like
dear St Francis of Assisi I am wedded
to Poverty: but in my case the marriage
is not a success,” or “How evil it is to
buy Love, and how evil to sell it! And
yet what purple hours one can snatch.”
Everett has him saying a version of this
to a lad who is getting dressed as Wilde
pays him off. Again, in April 1899, he
wrote, “I am going to try and find a
place near Genoa where I can live for
ten francs a day (boy compris).” The
word to note is “boy.”
One of the witnesses against Wilde
said that he had “committed the act of
sodomy with me.” Sodomy had been a
capital offense for which, barbarous as
it now seems, men were still hanged in
public in London less than twenty years
before Wilde was born.4 But other wit-
4
See A. D. Harvey, “Prosecutions for
Sodomy in England at the Beginning of
the Nineteenth Century,” The Histori-
cal Journal, December 1978.
nesses included a seventeen-year-old
servant in the house in Oxford where
Douglas had rooms, who said that
Wilde had kissed him and “placed his
penis between my legs and satisfied
himself.” Another was sixteen when
Wilde met him in Worthing and mas-
turbated him and “used his mouth” on
him. And a chambermaid at the Savoy
Hotel said that she had found Wilde
in a bedroom with a boy of about
fourteen.
Not long before his death, Wilde
somewhat unconvincingly told a re-
porter from the Daily Chronicle,
“Much of my moral obliquity is due
to the fact that my father would not
allow me to become a Catholic. There
is an artistic side to the church, and the
fragrance of its teaching would have
curbed my degeneracies.” He was in
fact received into the Roman Catholic
Church on his deathbed, as shown in
the movie.
Today that church is shaken to its
foundations by appalling scandals of
priestly child abuse, with a recent dra-
matic outcome in the defrocking of an
American cardinal. Rupert Everett
should know. He was brought up as a
Catholic and educated at Ampleforth,
the Benedictine monastery and board-
ing school in Yorkshire. A recent re-
port cataloged a hair-raising story of
abuse of boys there over forty years.
Several clerical and lay teachers have
been convicted, and two monks have
gone to prison.
Since Wilde’s day, we have grown
mercifully far more tolerant of most
sexual variety—but not pedophilia.
One London reviewer of Sturgis’s book
said that “if these and all the others
had been young women rather than
young men, Wilde would today be seen
not as an icon, but as a predator.” But
shouldn’t we see him as a predator any-
way? We may be dismayed by Wilde’s
sufferings in prison, but a hundred
years later he would likely have re-
ceived a longer sentence. Some years
ago a well-known figure in the London
pop music business was convicted of
offenses with boys of fourteen and fif-
teen, and sentenced to seven years.
Just as Wilde remained a gay hero,
the Labouchere amendment remained
a byword for injustice. And yet the law
to which it was appended, the 1885
Criminal Law Amendment Act, was in
its main purpose wholly commendable.
It was largely the work of one man,
the muckraking journalist W.T. Stead.
He had researched and published a
melodramatic series of articles on the
“Maiden tribute of modern Babylon,”
exposing the extent of child prostitu-
tion in London, and the act was in-
tended to suppress that evil. Wouldn’t
most of us admire that, and the aim of
protecting young girls—or boys—then
or now?
Great artists, the late musicologist
Hans Keller once said, have always
been less and done more than the pub-
lic wishes to believe. Wilde in some
ways may be an exception, since he did
treat his life as a dramatic performance.
And yet however gaudy and extraordi-
nary that life was, we honor him more
by remembering not the man but his
work, and above all what Auden called
his “one imperishable masterpiece,” fe-
licitously adding that The Importance
of Being Earnest, in Wilde’s own sub-
title “a trivial comedy for serious peo-
ple,” was “the only purely verbal opera
in English.”
41

Fellow Creatures:
Our Obligations
to the Other Animals
by Christine M.
Korsgaard.
Oxford University Press,
252 pp., $24.95
Christine Korsgaard is a
distinguished philosopher
who has taught at Har-
vard for most of her ca-
reer. Though not known
to the general public, she
is eminent within the field
for her penetrating and
analytically dense writ-
ings on ethical theory
and her critical interpre-
tations of the works of
Immanuel Kant. Now,
for the first time, she has
written a book about a
question that anyone can
understand. Fellow Crea-
tures: Our Obligations
to the Other Animals is
a blend of moral passion
and rigorous theoretical
argument. Though it is
often difficult—not be-
cause of any lack of clar-
ity in the writing but because of the
intrinsic complexity of the issues—this
book provides the opportunity for a
wider audience to see how philosophi-
cal reflection can enrich the response
to a problem that everyone should be
concerned about.
Since the publication of Peter Sing-
er’s Animal Liberation in 1975, there
has been a notable increase in vegetari-
anism or veganism as a personal choice
by individuals, and in the protection of
animals from cruel treatment in fac-
tory farms and scientific research, both
through law and through public pres-
sure on businesses and institutions. Yet
most people are not vegetarians: ap-
proximately 9.5 billion animals die an-
nually in food production in the United
States, and the carnivores who think
about it tend to console themselves
with the belief that the cruelties of fac-
tory farming are being ameliorated,
and that if this is done, there is noth-
ing wrong with killing animals pain-
lessly for food. Korsgaard firmly rejects
this outlook, not just because it ignores
the scale of suffering still imposed on
farmed animals, but because it depends
on a false contrast between the values
of human and animal lives, accord-
ing to which killing a human is wrong
in a way that killing an animal is not.
Korsgaard deploys a complex account
of morality to deal with this and many
other questions. What makes the book
especially interesting is the contrast
between her approach and Singer’s.
She writes, and Singer would certainly
agree, that “the way human beings
now treat the other animals is a moral
atrocity of enormous proportions.” But
beneath this agreement lie profound
differences. Singer is a utilitarian and
Korsgaard is a Kantian, and the deep
division in contemporary ethical the-
ory between these two conceptions of
morality marks their different accounts
of why we should radically change our
treatment of animals. (Equally inter-
esting is Korsgaard’s sharp divergence
42
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What We Owe a Rabbit
Thomas Nagel
Walton Ford: Loss of the Lisbon Rhinoceros, 2008. For more on Ford’s work, see Lucy Jakub’s
‘Walton Ford: Twenty-First-Century Naturalist’ on the NYR Daily (nybooks.com/ford-daily).
from Kant’s own implausible views on
the subject. As we shall see, she argues
persuasively that Kant’s general theory
of the foundations of morality supports
conclusions for this case completely
different from what he supposed.)
Utilitarianism is the view that what
makes actions right or wrong is their
tendency to promote or diminish the
total amount of happiness in the world,
by causing pleasure or pain, gratifica-
tion or suffering. Such experiences are
taken to be good or bad absolutely, and
not just for the being who undergoes
them. The inclusion of nonhuman ani-
mals in the scope of moral concern is
straightforward: the pleasure or pain of
any conscious being is part of the im-
personal balance of good and bad ex-
periences that morality tells us to make
as positive as possible.
But the existence or survival of such
creatures matters only because they
are vessels for the occurrence of good
experiences. According to utilitarian-
ism, if you kill an animal painlessly and
replace it with another whose experi-
ences are just as pleasant as those the
first animal would have had if it had not
been killed, the total balance of happi-
ness is not affected, and you have done
nothing wrong. Even in the case of hu-
mans, what makes killing them wrong
is not the mere ending of their lives but
the distress the prospect of death causes
them because of their strong conscious
sense of their own future existence, as
well as the emotional pain their deaths
cause to other humans connected with
them.
Korsgaard, in contrast, denies that
we can build morality on a foundation
of the absolute value of anything, in-
cluding pleasure and pain. She holds
that there is no such thing as absolute or
impersonal value in the sense proposed
by utilitarianism—something being
just good or bad, period. All value, she
says, is “tethered.” Things are good or
bad for some person or animal: your
pleasure is “good-for” you, my pain is
“bad-for” me. Korsgaard says that the
only sense in which something could be
absolutely good is if it were “good-for”
everyone. In the end she will maintain
that the lives and happiness of all con-
scious creatures are absolutely good in
this sense, but she reaches this conclu-
sion only by a complex ethical argu-
ment; it is not an axiom from which
morality begins, as in utilitarianism.
Before getting to that argument,
however, let us consider how she un-
derstands the value of life for humans
and for the other animals. Korsgaard
believes that “life itself is a good for al-
most any animal who is in reasonably
good shape.” Humans, with their ca-
pacity for language, historical record-
keeping, long-term memory, and
planning for the future, have a strong
consciousness of their lives as extended
in time. But because the other animals
are capable of learning and remem-
bering, we know that they also have
temporally extended conscious lives,
not just successions of momentary ex-
periences; what happens to an animal
at one time changes its point of view at
later times, so that it acquires “an on-
going character that makes it a more
unified self over time.” It is a matter of
degree, but the lives of most mammals
and birds, at least, have this kind of
unity, so we can think of them as having
good or bad lives, not just good or bad
experiences.
The big difference between us and
the other animals is that we are self-
conscious in a way they are not. Kors-
gaard marks this as the distinction
between instinctive and rational lives.
Unlike the other animals, we act not
just on the basis of our present percep-
tions, desires, and inclinations. We can
step back from the immediate appear-
ances and withhold endorsement from
them as grounds for belief or action if
we judge that they do not provide ad-
equate justifying reasons—as when we
discount a visual impres-
Walton Ford/Kasmin Gallery
sion as an optical illusion
or a negative evaluation
as the product of jealousy.
This type of rational self-
assessment has given rise
to both science and mo-
rality. Animals, by con-
trast, as far as we know,
do not evaluate their own
beliefs and motives be-
fore acting on them.
So the lives of humans
and of other animals are
very different. But does
that mean that human
lives are more important
or more valuable than the
lives of animals? Kors-
gaard asks, in keeping
with her skepticism about
untethered absolute value,
“More important or valu-
able to whom?” Your life
is more valuable to you
than it is to a rabbit, but
the rabbit’s life is more
valuable to the rabbit
than it is to you. And if
you protest that the rab-
bit’s life is not as impor-
tant to the rabbit as your
life is to you, Korsgaard’s response is
that even though you have a conception
of your life as a whole that the rabbit
lacks, this does not show that your life
is more valuable:
For even if the rabbit’s life is not as
important to her as yours is to you,
nevertheless, for her it contains
absolutely everything of value, all
that can ever be good or bad for
her, except possibly the lives of her
offspring. The end of her life is the
end of all value and goodness for
her. So there is something impon-
derable about these comparisons.
Korsgaard denies that the human ca-
pacity to appreciate literature, music,
and science makes human lives more
valuable. She observes that in compar-
ing humans with one another, most of
us do not think that one individual is
more valuable simply because more
good things happen in his or her life,
and she holds that we should take the
same view when comparing humans
with other animals. There are just dif-
ferent individuals, and the life of each
of them is of ultimate value to the crea-
ture itself.
But if we start from a conception of
value according to which what is good
or bad is always what is good or bad
for particular individuals, and nothing
is good or bad in itself, it is not clear
where we can find a basis for moral-
ity and for our obligations to others.
What reason do we have to care about
anything but what is good or bad for
ourselves, or for a limited group of oth-
ers who matter to us because of some
connection or identification? The his-
tory of moral philosophy offers various
answers to this question, most of which
I will not discuss. Korsgaard endorses
the one provided by Kant.
Kant held that we ourselves are the
source of the requirements of morality,
The New York Review

by virtue of our status as rational be-
ings. As Korsgaard puts it:
Because of the way in which we are
conscious of the motives for our
actions, we cannot act without en-
dorsing those motives as adequate
to justify what we propose to do. But
this is just what it means to value
something—to endorse our natu-
ral motives for wanting it or caring
about it, and to see them as good
reasons. So as rational beings, we
cannot act without setting some sort
of value on the ends of our actions.
Most important, Kant believes that
the value we cannot help assigning to
our ends is absolute value—value from
everyone’s point of view. This is a con-
dition of our ability to endorse our ac-
tions from an external
point of view toward
ourselves, which is the
essence of rationality.
And it has a momen-
tous consequence:
Your right to confer
absolute value on
your ends and actions
is limited by everyone
else’s (as Kant thinks
of it, every other ratio-
nal being’s) right to
confer absolute val-
ue on her ends and
actions in exactly the
same way. So in order
to count as a genuinely
rational choice, the
principle on which you
act must be acceptable
from anyone’s (any
rational being’s) point of view—it
must be consistent with the stand-
ing of others as ends in themselves.
This gives us Kant’s fundamental
principle of morality1 in two of its fa-
miliar formulations: act in such a way
that you can will your principle as uni-
versal law; and treat all rational beings
as ends and never merely as means. To
treat others as ends in themselves is to
regard the achievement of their goals
or ends as good in itself, and not just for
them. The practical upshot is that each
of us has a strong reason to pursue our
own ends in a way that does not inter-
fere with the pursuit by others of their
ends, and some reason to help them if
they need help.
But what does this imply about ani-
mals? In Kant’s view, we impose the
moral law on ourselves: it applies to
us because of our rational nature. The
other animals, because they are not
rational, cannot engage in this kind of
self-legislation. Kant concluded that
they are not part of the moral commu-
nity; they have no duties and we have
no duties toward them.2
1
It is called “the categorical imperative”
for reasons that need not detain us.
2
Though Kant says we may treat ani-
mals purely as means to our ends, he
qualifies this by adding that we have a
duty to ourselves not to treat them cru-
elly, since cruelty to animals results in
a callousness that may affect the treat-
ment of our fellow humans. Korsgaard
suggests plausibly that this is “a product
of desperation” on Kant’s part, “an at-
tempt to explain the everyday intuition
that we really do have at least some ob-
ligation to be kind to animals.”
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It is here that Korsgaard parts com-
pany with him. She distinguishes two
senses in which someone can be a mem-
ber of the moral community, an active
and a passive sense. To be a member in
the active sense is to be one of the com-
munity of reciprocal lawgivers who is
obligated to obey the moral law. To be
a member in the passive sense is to be
one of those to whom duties are owed,
who must be treated as an end. Kant
believed that these two senses coincide,
but Korsgaard says this is a mistake. The
moral law that we rational beings give to
ourselves can give us duties of concern
for other, nonrational beings who are not
themselves bound by the moral law—du-
ties to treat them as ends in themselves:
There is no reason to think that
because it is only autonomous ra-
tional beings who must make the
normative presupposition that we
are ends in ourselves, the norma-
tive presupposition is only about
autonomous rational beings. And
in fact it seems arbitrary, because
of course we also value ourselves
as animate beings. This becomes
especially clear when we reflect on
the fact that many of the things that
we take to be good-for us are not
good for us in our capacity as auton-
omous rational beings. Food, sex,
comfort, freedom from pain and
fear, are all things that are good for
us insofar as we are animals.
I find this argument for a revision of
Kant’s position completely convincing.
Korsgaard sums up:
On a Kantian conception, what is
special about human beings is not
that we are the universe’s darlings,
whose fate is absolutely more im-
portant than the fates of the other
creatures who like us experience
their own existence. It is exactly
the opposite: What is special about
us is the empathy that enables us
to grasp that other creatures are
important to themselves in just the
way we are important to ourselves,
and the reason that enables us to
draw the conclusion that follows:
that every animal must be regarded
as an end in herself, whose fate
matters, and matters absolutely, if
anything matters at all.
Having secured the admission of the
other animals to the Kantian moral
community as passive members, Kors-
gaard turns to a further problem: “Na-
ture,” she says, “is recalcitrant to moral
standards.” Not only are the other ani-
mals not subject to the moral law; their
interests are irreconcilably opposed in
a way that makes impossible the kind
of moral harmony that we can aspire to
as an ideal for the human world. What
is good for the lion is necessarily bad
for the antelope, and even if we recog-
nize our own duty to treat both of them
as ends in themselves, that doesn’t pro-
vide a moral resolution of the conflict.
Korsgaard concludes her book with
discussion of responses to this prob-
lem by those who write about animal
ethics, some of which outsiders to the
field may find bizarre. One proposal is
to eliminate predation by arranging the
gradual extinction of predator species.
Other defenders of the rights of animals
believe we should pre-
serve their habitats and
otherwise leave them
alone entirely, so that
all animals are wild.
Korsgaard rejects
both these extremes.
She believes we obvi-
ously shouldn’t kill
or exploit animals for
food, but we have no
obligation to take up
the position of a creator
by bringing it about
that the world is popu-
lated by creatures who
are better off than the
ones who would oth-
erwise be there. She
also believes that it’s all
right to keep animals as
pets, provided the so-
ciety ensures that they
are not abused. (Her book is dedicated,
by name, to the five cats she has lived
with over the past thirty-five years.)
Korsgaard also notes the curious fact
that many people are much more con-
cerned with the preservation of species
from extinction than they are with the
welfare of individual animals, and she
thinks this makes no moral sense. Spe-
cies don’t have a point of view, and their
survival doesn’t have value for them:
If you accept the idea that every-
thing that is good must be good for
someone, for some creature, then
you must deny that it makes sense
to say that species or ecosystems
have intrinsic value. According to
the view I have been advocating, it
is plain that the health of an eco-
system matters because it matters
to the creatures who depend upon
it, and the extinction of a species
matters when it threatens the bio-
diversity and so the health of the
ecosystem and with it the welfare
of its members.
Her claim is that species have no value
in themselves. They may have value for
individuals, but only individuals have
value in themselves. (This leaves aside
aesthetic value, which I suspect plays
a part in many people’s attachment to
species as such.)
Korsgaard’s position is undeniably
powerful, and if it prevailed it would
be one of the largest moral transforma-
tions in the history of humanity. Let
me close by describing two possible
grounds of resistance to it. They would
also apply to the utilitarian argument
for somewhat different but equally rad-
ical conclusions about how we should
treat animals.
The first ground would be a rejection
of the crucial idea of absolute value,
either as a moral starting point or as
the conclusion of a Kantian moral ar-
gument. According to this view, all we
have to work with in justifying moral
requirements are the interests, motives,
or feelings of the individuals to whom
they are supposed to apply, rather than
some transcendent or impersonal point
of view. This does not mean moral prin-
ciples can’t be justified. If, for example,
it is in the collective interest of members
of a human community to govern their
interactions by certain rules that permit
peaceful coexistence and cooperation,
that would provide a basis for morality
that depends only on what is good-for
individuals, and not what is good abso-
lutely. And if there is a shared human
sentiment of empathy toward the other
animals, or some of them, then that
would support a requirement of humane
treatment as part of morality, though its
content would depend on the strength
and scope of the sentiment, not on the
absolute badness of animal suffering.
Korsgaard acknowledges this type
of position in her discussion of reci-
procity as a basis for morality. She
points out that it has an implication
that most people would find unaccept-
able: namely that if we encountered
rational beings so powerful that they
had nothing to fear from us, and who
didn’t feel any sympathy for us, they
could kill or enslave or experiment on
us without doing anything wrong. But
those who deny that anything has abso-
lute value may be willing to accept that
consequence.
The second possible ground of resis-
tance is also mentioned by Korsgaard.
One might hold that although humans
are not more important or more valu-
able than other animals, it is morally
permissible for us to be partial to our
fellow humans and to count their in-
terests more, out of a “sense of solidar-
ity with our own kind.” We recognize
the moral acceptability of such par-
tiality toward the interests of our own
families, for example, and Korsgaard
considers the possibility that in situa-
tions of life- or- death emergency (rats
spreading plague) we would be mor-
ally justified in putting the interests of
our own species first, to lethal effect.
But even if this is granted, it is a far cry
from endorsing a degree of partiality
for the human species that allows the
lives of other animals to be routinely
sacrificed to the pleasures of the table.
In effect, that seems to be the princi-
ple to which most carnivores adhere,
though they are probably helped by the
assumption that Korsgaard has gone to
great lengths to combat: that the loss of
life is not really so bad for an animal.
Moral disagreement is a constant fea-
ture of the human condition, as we strug-
gle to find the right way to live. Whether
we should kill animals for food is one of
the deepest disagreements of our time;
but we should not be surprised if the
issue is rendered moot within the next
few decades, when cultured meat (also
called clean meat, synthetic meat, or in
vitro meat) becomes less expensive to
produce than meat from slaughtered
animals, and equally palatable. When
that happens, I suspect that our present
practices, being no longer gastronomi-
cally necessary, will suddenly become
morally unimaginable.
43

Merchants of Truth:
The Business of News
and the Fight for Facts
by Jill Abramson.
Simon and Schuster, 534 pp., $30.00
Network Propaganda:
Manipulation, Disinformation, and
Radicalization in American Politics
by Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris,
and Hal Roberts.
Oxford University Press,
462 pp., $27.95 (paper)
Since the early 2000s, journalism has
been a precarious and embattled pro-
fession. The news industry has suf-
fered staggering losses of revenue
and employment, and journalists
have become the targets of scorn
and even hatred. The entire field
has been politically reconfigured,
as media outlets identified with
different ideological positions pro-
vide their audiences with alterna-
tive versions of reality.
The profession’s fall from grace
and the industry’s transformation
have been all the more dramatic
because of the advantages the
news media enjoyed in the late
twentieth century. Newspapers in
most cities had consolidated down
to one or two dailies, leaving the
survivors with a near monopoly on
print advertising in metropolitan
markets. Although cable was mak-
ing inroads, the three big broadcast
networks still dominated television
news. High-quality journalism it-
self was never very profitable in
print or on TV, but it gave media
organizations prestige and influ-
ence, and with their profits from
advertising, they could afford it.
The monopoly held by the major
news media also had the effect of mar-
ginalizing radical views on both ends of
the ideological spectrum, creating the
appearance and to some extent the re-
ality of a broad bipartisan consensus in
public life. Bolstered by healthy profit
margins, the press was also able to cast
itself as uncompromised by any com-
mercial or partisan interest. Journal-
ists and publishers who lived up to that
standard of independence in the publi-
cation of the Pentagon Papers, the rev-
elation of the Watergate scandal, and
other great exposés became heroes.
This was the world that today’s older
journalists knew when they were young.
It was a world that concentrated power
and profits but also enabled the press,
insofar as its leaders were willing, to
keep watch on government and busi-
ness. David Halberstam’s The Powers
That Be (1979), which focused on four
exemplars of the era (CBS, Time Inc.,
The Washington Post, and the Los An-
geles Times), was a chronicle of that
world at its height.
In the early stages of the digital revo-
lution, the print media saw the new
technology as a means of reducing pro-
duction costs and expanding their au-
dience, and they were so self- confident
that they gave away the news for free
online. But print circulation began fall-
ing, and as the Internet developed in
the early 2000s, Google and sites such
as Craigslist siphoned off ad revenue
44
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Fall from Grace
Paul Starr
the newspapers had depended on, and
Facebook would drain away more. The
full force of the digital wave hit a de-
cade ago, at the same time as the Great
Recession, plunging many newspapers
into bankruptcy and leaving others
struggling to survive.
Yet there were promising signs too.
New online media were creatively ap-
plying the unprecedented capabilities of
digital technology, fostering new forms
of public exchange, and receiving major
infusions of capital. Since then, some
of the new media organizations have
begun to produce serious journalism
and become genuine rivals to the tradi-
Members of the BuzzFeed staff at the company’s headquarters a month before
major layoffs were announced, New York City, December 2018
tional news giants, which have adapted
to compete in the current environment.
In the last few years, journalists who
adhere to the profession’s norms have
also had a revived sense of mission.
Amid the torrent of lies from the high-
est reaches of government and disinfor-
mation on social media, journalism’s
leaders are making unabashed claims
that their business is “truth,” using that
word without apology or qualification.
But because journalism has not been
a lucrative business for some time, its
ideals of truth-telling have become
harder to uphold. The majority of digi-
tal ad revenue goes to Google, Face-
book, and other companies that do
not put it back into producing content;
most newspapers no longer have the
resources even for many of the routine
stories they used to cover, much less for
costly investigations. News organiza-
tions of all kinds are preoccupied with
the new metrics of the digital economy
and the old imperatives of revenue
and profits. Survival depends on mon-
etizing organizational assets, which in
practice often means calling on edito-
rial staff to work on business projects,
ending the separation that was once a
cardinal principle of journalistic ethics.
This tension between editorial au-
tonomy and profit lies at the heart of
Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth.
Taking Halberstam’s book as her
model, Abramson uses four news
organizations— BuzzFeed, Vice, The
New York Times, and The Washington
Post—to tell the story of how journal-
ism has evolved since around 2007, the
point when newspapers began getting
desperate and social media began tak-
ing off. The book has been dogged by
charges of plagiarism and carelessness
that have deflected attention from its
argument. Several passages in the chap-
ters on Vice all too closely follow other
writers’ language; Abramson also got
details wrong about a number of young
journalists, making them appear inex-
perienced and unqualified. There is no
excusing these failures, but not every
damaged vessel should be sunk. For
all its deficiencies, Merchants of Truth
sheds considerable light on the news
in this dark time; anyone who wants to
understand what has been happening to
journalism will learn a great deal from it.
Abramson is not a detached observer.
She was in the thick of journalism’s cri-
sis of survival as executive editor of the
Times from 2011 to 2014, when she was
summarily fired by the publisher, Ar-
thur Sulzberger Jr. Folded within Mer-
chants of Truth is a personal memoir
of her tenure that has inevitably drawn
attention for its gossipy details and its
significance in the age of women’s de-
mands for equality in the workplace
(she was the first woman to hold the
Times’s top editorial post). But this is
not what her book is about. Abramson
believes she was underpaid and judged
unfairly on sexist grounds, yet she also
acknowledges so many limitations and
mistakes of her own that she makes a
fairly strong case for Sulzberger’s de-
cision to replace her. What connects
her personal story to the book’s larger
theme is that she frames her difficulties
as arising chiefly from the pressure at the
Times to prioritize business concerns.
To broaden her account beyond
the struggles of the traditional press,
Abramson recounts the seemingly im-
probable transformation of two media
upstarts into important journalistic
outlets. BuzzFeed and Vice have fol-
lowed a course that actually has old
precedents. Innovation in the media
often comes from the bottom of the
market in cheap forms that the estab-
lished institutions initially regard as
unserious and vulgar. The penny press
in the 1830s and later popular newspa-
pers won mass audiences by catering to
their readers’ emotions, inventing new
genres such as crime reporting, and
adopting visually arresting changes in
graphic design.
BuzzFeed was the brainchild of Jonah
Peretti, who as a graduate student at the
MIT Media Lab had become interested
in what he called “contagious media.”
He first made a name for himself as one
of the founders of The Huffington Post,
where his mastery of techniques
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
for gaming Google searches was
invaluable in boosting traffic for
the startup’s cheap fare, mostly
celebrity posts and rewrites of
stories from other news outlets.
He then saw an opportunity for a
new media enterprise based on the
viral spread of memes, and in 2006
set up BuzzFeed, originally as a
laboratory for creating the tools
to detect trends in online shar-
ing faster than anyone else. This
was just as Facebook was emerg-
ing: “It’s like we happened to start
surfing a few minutes before a
great wave rolled in,” Peretti said.
When BuzzFeed began offer-
ing content, it had no pretensions
to journalism, aiming instead to
get people to share its cat videos,
weird news items, quizzes, and
listicles. (Criticized for relying so
heavily on lists, Peretti defended
them as “an amazing way to con-
sume media,” citing the Ten Com-
mandments and the Bill of Rights.)
BuzzFeed’s staff competed not
just to go viral but to go “mega-vi”; no
website was better at creating million-
view posts out of likable or, even better,
“relatable” trivia. Abramson mentions
that BuzzFeed even discovered an
emotion for which no word exists in the
English language: “the feeling of hav-
ing one’s faith in humanity restored.”
Posts conveying that feeling went
mega-vi. Whether BuzzFeed itself at
that point restored one’s faith in hu-
manity was another matter.
Vice, which began as a countercul-
ture paper in Montreal in the 1990s (its
founders eventually moved it to New
York), appealed to entirely different
emotions. It sought to be edgy and pro-
vocative, oblivious to political correct-
ness, and indeed intentionally offensive
with articles like “Was Jesus a Fag?”
and a “Racist Issue” featuring stereo-
typical racial images. Of Vice’s three
cofounders— Shane Smith, Gavin Mc-
Innes, and Suroosh Alvi— McInnes
was the one responsible for many of the
provocations until his colleagues forced
him out; he went on to found the Proud
Boys, a far-right white-nationalist,
antifeminist group. Smith was the dom-
inant force in turning Vice into a media
empire. His vision, Abramson writes,
was for Vice to be “a bad-boy brand,”
but it was also a “laddie magazine” that
was somehow a “bible for hipsters” too.
From these unpromising beginnings,
BuzzFeed and Vice became respect-
The New York Review
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able enterprises with high ambitions.
In 2011 Peretti brought in Politico’s
Ben Smith as news editor and gave him
the budget to hire accomplished young
journalists and a mandate to do news
in a way that would be as relatable and
shareable as BuzzFeed’s other content.
Although BuzzFeed News at first spe-
cialized in little scoops that earned
fleeting attention, Peretti authorized
Smith to create an investigative report-
ing unit to do more substantial stories.
In 2016, through the work of Craig Sil-
verman, BuzzFeed also played a criti-
cal part in identifying and debunking
“fake news” in its original sense as
pure scams and fabrications. Vice’s
move up the ladder of respectability
came chiefly through its expansion into
video and development of international
reporting “from the edge,” often exotic
and dangerous locations— even North
Korea—where other news organiza-
tions would not go.
These undertakings were feasible
only because BuzzFeed and Vice at-
tracted capital from patient investors
and advertising from major brands. With
no tradition of strict separation between
the editorial and business sides, both or-
ganizations created their own in-house
staff to produce “native ads” that told
stories in the same style as their edito-
rial content and therefore had the same
potential to be shared virally. For ex-
ample, in a charming BuzzFeed video
ad, “Dear Kitten,” an older, wiser cat
explains to a newly arrived kitten the
pleasures and dangers of the house,
eventually describing the delicious Pu-
rina Friskies that humans magically
unlock from armored cans. (That ad,
a classic of viral advertising, has been
viewed more than 30 million times on
YouTube.) Vice’s video ads were so
similar to its documentary reports that
viewers could hardly tell the difference.
According to Abramson, BuzzFeed
deleted posts that might offend spon-
sors, while Vice also killed stories or
“sanitized” them when they jeopardized
relationships with potential advertisers.
The business of being provocative ap-
parently did not include a readiness to
provoke business. In one respect, these
new practices were contagious; despite
their misgivings, newspaper publishers
were soon creating their own in-house
agencies to produce native ads too.
By the early 2000s, financial pres-
sures were forcing the owners of tra-
ditional media to sell or adapt. Several
newspaper-owning families—the Chan-
dlers of the Los Angeles Times, the
Bancrofts of The Wall Street Journal,
and the Ridders of Knight Ridder, for
example— decided to cash in while
they could, but the Sulzbergers at the
Times and the Grahams at the Post
held on. At first the Post seemed to be
on a steadier course because of Katha-
rine Graham’s purchase in 1984 of the
Stanley Kaplan test prep company,
which became a gold mine, at least for a
while, by expanding into for-profit edu-
cation. Meanwhile, the Times made a
series of blunders, including the disas-
trous decision to pay $1 billion in 1993
for the Boston Globe, which it would
be able to unload twenty years later for
only $70 million. But the ensuing re-
versal of fortune is where Abramson’s
story holds its main interest. Chiefly
because of different decisions about
their core news business, the Sulzberg-
ers succeeded in righting the Times,
while the Post floundered and the Gra-
hams decided to sell.
T he Post’s story, as Abramson tells
it, is a case study in strategic short-
sightedness. Determined to keep up the
paper’s profit margins to satisfy share-
holders, the Grahams— first Donald
E. Graham, Katharine’s son, and then
Katharine Weymouth, Don’s niece—
made round after round of cuts in the
newsroom. Don Graham also insisted
on maintaining the paper’s focus on the
local Washington area, rejecting advice
to turn the Post into a global brand. In
another bad decision, he turned down
the proposal for what became Politico,
which has developed into a formidable
rival to the Post itself in Washington
reporting. When Kaplan became im-
plicated in the deceptive practices of
the for-profit education industry and
the Obama administration changed the
rules for federal student loans, what
had seemed like the Post’s salvation
became a curse. Kaplan’s profits plum-
meted, and the Post’s entanglement
with the company damaged the pa-
per’s reputation. With no answer to the
Post’s difficulties, the Grahams in 2013
turned to a buyer whom they trusted
to uphold the paper’s traditions, Jeff
Bezos, under whom it has rebounded.
In contrast to the Grahams, Arthur
Sulzberger Jr. refused to make deep
editorial cuts at the Times in the be-
lief that if it maintained its standards,
people would continue to pay to read
it. The Times sold off its other assets,
slashed its dividends, and cut its busi-
ness staff. “Sulzberger was certain his
paper could be ‘the last man stand-
ing,’” Abramson writes, “as long as he
was careful not to damage the quality
of the news.” Even though an initial ef-
fort in 2005 to establish a paywall on
the website had failed, Sulzberger took
the risk of imposing one again in 2011,
this time with a design that allowed
free access for infrequent visitors but
required regular readers to pay. The
new paywall proved wildly successful,
generating a new stream of income
from digital subscriptions.
But the financial pressures continued,
and it was against that background that
Abramson’s conflicts with Sulzberger
developed, especially over the pressure
for closer collaboration between the ed-
itorial and business staffs. Abramson
objected to journalists being “dis-
tracted from their work by endless
meetings with product managers” who
were trying to come up with money-
making ventures such as apps and
sponsored events. None of the incidents
she relates, however, appear to have in-
volved decisions that compromised the
paper; her struggles with Mark Thomp-
son, the Times CEO, were as much over
turf as principle. She resented being
imposed upon. During a discussion
with Sulzberger and Thompson about
apps for monetizing the Times’s con-
tent, she “snapped” at Thompson: “If
that’s what you expect, you have the
wrong executive editor.” Although she
claims that she was unwilling to sacri-
fice her “ethical moorings for business
exigencies,” it’s not clear that any ethi-
cal sacrifice was being asked of her.
Yet in writing her book, or perhaps
not writing enough of it, Abramson has
landed herself in an ethical controversy.
Her critics have been hard on her, and

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March 21, 2019 45

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Please order books by using the contact information listed under each press’s name, or visit your local bookstore or online retailer.
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JOSEPH CHAPMAN
My Molly Life
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FINDING OUR LONG WAY
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THE PRELUDE OF DIVINE
WISDOM IN THE ART OF
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WHAT GAVE YOU THAT
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PATHWAYS TO PEACE
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VARBERG PRESS, LLC
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MYTH OF ENGLAND
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THE WARS OF THE
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SPIRITUAL GROWTH
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РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
it’s not surprising. A writer on lapses
in journalism who becomes an illustra-
tion of the profession’s problems is like
a preacher revealed to be a sinner. No
one in the congregation will talk about
anything else.
The sermonizer’s sins, however,
are sometimes a distraction from big-
ger problems. The major limitation of
Abramson’s book is that it offers too re-
assuring a picture of journalism. During
her two years of work on it, she caught
the Times and the Post on an upswing in
their finances and BuzzFeed and Vice
on an upswing in their editorial stan-
dards. In her conclusion, Abramson
briefly discusses cuts in newsrooms
elsewhere, but the general drift of the
book is that things are looking up.
A wide-angle view would bring out
a darker story. Newspapers around
the country continue hurtling toward
collapse, and digital media are not re-
placing them. Since 2004, according
to a study by Penny Abernathy of the
University of North Carolina, about 20
percent of newspapers have shut down,
while many of the survivors have be-
come what Ken Doctor of Harvard’s
NiemanLab calls NINOs (newspapers
in name only): diminished ad shoppers
with hardly any local reporting. Private
equity firms have bought many of these
to suck the last profits from them. The
new year has also brought editorial cuts
in digital news media, including layoffs
at both BuzzFeed and Vice.
While the Times and the Post may
navigate the digital transition success-
fully, they belong to a limited class
of national news organizations large
enough to generate substantial subscrip-
tion revenue from their readers. There is
no sign that the digital market can sup-
port local or even regional journalism
at anything like the level it had in print.
The picture of the news that
Abramson provides is also too re-
assuring because it leaves out the radi-
cal transformation of the right. The
problem is not just the omission from
her book of any sustained discussion
of the major right-wing outlets such as
Fox; Abramson is also missing a larger
change. When Halberstam wrote The
Powers That Be, it made sense to focus
on a few individual news organizations.
Most Americans got their news from a
paper they subscribed to, an evening
news program they watched regularly,
and perhaps a weekly news magazine.
Now they get news from more diverse
and only hazily known sources, and
much of it via social networks.
In Network Propaganda, Yochai
Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Rob-
erts illuminate this new “media eco-
system” through an analysis of how
political news was linked, liked, and
shared from 2015 to 2018 and how the
news media either amplified or checked
the diffusion of falsehoods. The study
is based on four million political stories
from 40,000 online sources, as well as
case studies of conspiracy stories, ru-
mors, and outright disinformation.
The pattern that emerges from the
data contradicts the idea that there are
two symmetrical echo chambers on the
right and left. On the right, Benkler
and his colleagues find an insular echo
chamber skewed toward the extreme,
where even the major news organiza-
tions (Fox and Breitbart) do not ob-
serve norms of truth-seeking. But from
the center-right (for example, The Wall
Street Journal) through the center to
the left, they find an interconnected
network of news organizations that
operate under the constraint of estab-
lished journalistic norms.
The result is two different patterns
in how falsehood travels. On the right,
major news organizations amplified
stories concocted in the right’s nether
reaches, such as Pizzagate (Democrats
were purportedly operating a child-
trafficking ring out of a pizza shop in
Washington) and the Seth Rich murder
conspiracy (an aide at the Democratic
National Committee was killed suppos-
edly because he divulged its e-mails to
WikiLeaks). False stories originated on
the left as well, but they were generally
not relayed to a wider public. The right-
wing media failed to correct falsehoods
or to hold their journalists accountable
Jill Abramson (center) with Gerald Boyd, Joe Lelyveld, and others in the newsroom of
The New York Times as the Pulitzer Prizes were announced, April 2004
for spreading them, whereas the rest of
the media checked one another, cor-
rected mistakes when they made them,
and in several cases disciplined or fired
those responsible for errors. These
differences contributed to the greater
susceptibility on the right not only to
home-grown propaganda but also to
Russian disinformation and commer-
cially fabricated clickbait whenever
these were consistent with what the au-
thors call the “tribal narrative.”
T he analysis in Network Propaganda
does not, however, exonerate main-
stream journalism from all that has
gone wrong in the media. In 2016, Ben-
kler and his colleagues argue, the right
was able to “harness” the press to its
cause because of journalists’ preoccu-
pation with “balance” and eagerness
for scoops. They note that the press had
an institutional problem: How would
it maintain balance if reporters did
hard-hitting stories about Trump? Bor-
rowing from a study by Thomas E. Pat-
terson, they conclude that the solution
was to run equally hard-hitting sto-
ries about Hillary Clinton. Journalists
“performed” neutrality with harshly
negative coverage of both candidates. In
fact, according to Patterson’s analysis,
negative coverage of Clinton outpaced
positive coverage 62 percent to 38 per-
cent, while coverage of Trump was 56
percent negative to 44 percent positive.
The interest of mainstream journal-
ists in balance created a market for
scoops about Clinton that the right was
able to help satisfy. A clear instance of
this pattern is the coverage of the Clin-
ton Foundation. The Times entered into
an arrangement that gave it advance ac-
cess to Clinton Cash, a book by a Breit-
bart editor, Peter Schweizer, sponsored
by a project founded by Schweizer and
Steve Bannon and funded by Robert
Mercer. The resulting Times article
insinuated that in exchange for money
for the Clinton Foundation, Hillary
Clinton had enabled a Russian firm to
acquire control of American uranium
assets, even though the Times had no
evidence that she had intervened in the
decision to approve the deal, which a
committee representing nine govern-
ment agencies had made. The Times
article and other overwrought and
often misleading pieces in the main-
stream press about the Clinton Founda-
tion and the Clinton and DNC e-mails
became some of the most widely shared
Ruby Washington/The New York Times/Redux
news items in 2016, thus helping the
Republican effort to depict Clinton and
the Democrats as corrupt.
The negative mainstream coverage
of Clinton, according to Network Pro-
paganda, mattered far more than Rus-
sian disinformation to the outcome of
the 2016 election. The authors’ point
is not to deprecate the value of pro-
fessional journalism, which they rec-
ognize is indispensable. Even though
perfect objectivity is impossible and
truth is “necessarily provisional,”
Benkler and his colleagues write,
truth-seeking organizations function
differently from organizations set up
to produce propaganda. While they are
not always successful, the media that
observe journalistic standards of truth
make it possible to stop lies in their
tracks. They give us some hope that a
democratic society can reach a rational
understanding of the world.
Yet the truth about our truth-seeking
media, as Abramson’s book rightly em-
phasizes, is that they are also profit-
seeking; our merchants of truth operate
not only under journalistic norms but
also under commercial constraints.
When a publisher succeeds financially,
as Sulzberger did, by protecting the
quality of the news, we ought to cel-
ebrate that achievement as a victory
for democracy itself. When an organi-
zation like BuzzFeed hunts down and
exposes fabrications, that is a victory
too. But when so much of journalism
is at risk of disappearing and so many
Americans inhabit a right-wing echo
chamber, we ought to recognize that
our country is in a crisis that strikes at
its foundations.
The New York Review

The Contested Legacy of Muslim Spain
Kingdoms of Faith:
A New History of Islamic Spain
by Brian A. Catlos.
Basic Books, 482 pp., $35.00
The historiography of medieval Spain
is an academic battleground on which
historians and other intellectuals pick
over elements of the country’s past that
might support one or another version
of its national identity. The question
of national identity became acute dur-
ing and after the Spanish Civil War. In
1943 the medievalist Claudio Sánchez-
Albornoz published España y el Islam,
in which the Muslim occupation of the
Iberian Peninsula was pre-
sented as a disaster: “With-
out Islam who can guess
what our destiny might have
been?” Sánchez-Albornoz
identified strongly with what
he saw as the specifically
Christian and Castilian her-
itage of Spain. This version
of Spanish history might
have appealed to the royal-
ists, Falangists, and fervent
Catholics who were winning
the civil war. Yet Sánchez-
Albornoz not only spent
the Franco years teaching
in Argentina, he was also
president of the council of
the Spanish Republican
government in exile, and his
book was published in Bue-
nos Aires.
It was another exile from
Franco’s Spain who pro-
duced an interpretation of
Spanish history that cele-
brated just those elements in
it that Sánchez-Albornoz re-
garded as his country’s curse.
After the civil war broke
out, the cultural historian
Américo Castro had taken
teaching posts in America,
and in 1948 his España en su
historia: cristianos, moros y Muhammad XII, also known as Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler of Granada, leaving the city in 1492 after its conquest by
judíos was published in Bra- Ferdinand and Isabella; detail of an altarpiece in the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral of Granada, sixteenth century
zil. This book emphasized
the hybrid nature of medieval Spanish
society and the enormous contributions
made to its culture by Arabs, Berbers,
and Jews. Castro used the term con-
vivencia to describe the peaceful coex-
istence that he argued was commonly,
though not always, the leading feature
of the Muslim and Christian regimes in
medieval Spain.
The debate has continued into the
post-Franco era. The Cuban-born
scholar of medieval history María Rosa
Menocal followed Castro in celebrat-
ing the Arab and Jewish contributions
to Spanish history and culture.* “A
thousand years ago on the Iberian Pen-
insula, an enlightened vision of Islam
had created the most advanced culture
in Europe,” she wrote in 2002. Meno-
cal lamented the Christian Recon-
*See “Culture in the Time of Toler-
ance: Al-Andalus as a Model for Our
Time” (Occasional Papers, Yale Law
School Other Scholarship, 2000) and
The Ornament of the World: How Mus-
lims, Jews, and Christians Created a
Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
(Little, Brown, 2002).
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Robert Irwin
quista, but it was not, in her view, what
brought an end to that utopia of high
culture and tolerance. Instead, civil
strife among Muslim warlords in the
early eleventh century began the ruin
of Andalusian civilization. Thereafter
the invasion from Morocco of first the
fanatical Almoravid Berbers and later
the no less fanatical Almohad Berbers
completed the ruin.
In The Myth of the Andalusian Para-
dise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews
under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain
(2016), Darío Fernández-Morera took
a less pollyannaish view of Muslim
Spain, which he argued “was marked by
religious and therefore cultural repres-
sion in all areas of life” (in the words
of his book jacket). His argument is
densely and polemically annotated,
and Menocal’s writings do not feature
in his bibliography. In Kingdoms of
Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain,
Brian Catlos, a historian at the Uni-
versity of Colorado, expertly navigates
between these clashing interpretations
and presents a balanced account of the
Muslim occupation of Spain and its
consequences.
W ithin a few decades of the death of
the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD,
Arab armies occupied the Sassanian
Persian Empire and much of the Byz-
antine Empire. Having invaded Byz-
antine Egypt in 639, the Arabs went
on to occupy Berber North Africa.
In 711 an army of Arab and Berber
troops crossed the Strait of Gibraltar
from Morocco and went on to conquer
Visigothic Spain and then to invade
southern France.
Those sweeping victories can
presented as the fruits of jihad, and
Catlos does acknowledge that religion
both strengthened the cohesion of the
invading tribal armies and influenced
the accounts of their victories in later
chronicles. But he prefers to emphasize
the warriors’ desire for loot, including
church treasures, livestock, and slaves,
as well as the prospect of fertile lands
to settle on. Some of the Visigothic
aristocracy, at odds with their king,
assisted the advance of the Muslim
armies. It is also likely that many of the
Berber troops still had only the slight-
est grasp of Islam.
In France the Muslim advance was
checked by their defeat at the hands
of Charles Martel at the Battle of
Poitiers in 732. In Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon fa-
mously speculated that, but for the vic-
tory of the Franks, the Muslims might
have swept on to cross the English
Channel: “Perhaps the interpretation
of the Koran would now be taught in
the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits
might demonstrate to a circumcised
people the sanctity and truth of the rev-
elation of Mahomet.” By the end of the
eighth century the Muslim territory in
southern France, Septimania, had been
lost to the Franks.
Though Muslim Spain, and particu-
larly the Caliphate of Cordova, has
sometimes been presented as a utopia
of multiculturalism, Catlos argues that
tolerance, which was in any case often
strained to the breaking point, was the
product of economic and political ne-
cessity. There were simply too many
Christians and Jews in eighth-century
Spain to be killed or expelled, and be-
sides they were needed as artisans and
agricultural laborers. Their acceptance
was the result of countless local accom-
be modations rather than an official decree.
The modern Arabic word for tolera-
tion is tasamuh, which may also signify
indulgence, forbearance, or leniency.
The primary medieval sense seems to
have been “magnanimity,” rather than
a readiness to be relaxed about the re-
ligious or political views of others. In
considering the significance of religious
affiliation in medieval Spain one has
to dismiss from one’s mind analogies
with modern fundamentalist Islam and
revivalist Christianity. As Catlos puts
it, when discussing the identity of Mus-
lims who eventually found themselves
living under Christian rule, “religion in
this era was conceived of not so much
as a matter of individual conscience
as the legal community to which one
belonged. A Muslim was
De Agostini Picture Library/G. Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images
someone who followed ‘the
law of the Muslims.’” Very
much the same had applied
to Christians under Muslim
rule. Though there was no at-
tempt to force the conquered
Christians to convert, by the
ninth century large num-
bers had done so, headed
by descendants of the old
Visigothic aristocracy and
leading townspeople. Other
citizens followed their lead
as they sought economic and
social advantage.
n the eighth century, Cor- I
dova became the capital
of al-Andalus, or Muslim
Spain. The entire province
was under the nominal rule
of the Umayyad caliphs in
Damascus, though in light
of the distances involved
the regional governors were
effectively independent. In
750 the Umayyad Caliphate
in the East was overthrown
by the Abbasids, and mem-
bers of the Umayyad family
were hunted down and
slaughtered. But one Umay-
yad prince escaped and
made his way to North Af-
rica. From there he reached
Spain in 756 and established himself
in Cordova as emir of the caliphate of
al-Andalus.
The emirate prospered under a suc-
cession of Umayyad princes and en-
joyed its heyday during the long reign of
‘Abd al-Rahman III (912–961). In 929
he declared himself caliph, thereby set-
ting himself in opposition to the Sunni
Abbasid caliph in Baghdad and the Shia
Fatimid caliph in Cairo. Catlos presents
a vivid if absurdly anachronistic picture
of high life in Cordova: “The mascu-
line culture of the Andalusia elite was
ninth-century ‘gangsta’—a testoster-
one-driven, wine-fueled culture, revolv-
ing around bling, bros, and biyatches,
of biting freestyle wordplay and con-
spicuous consumption.” Yet despite its
wealth and swagger, it was nonetheless
provincial, and its courtiers, poets, and
scholars had everything to learn from
what was going on in Abbasid Baghdad.
The arrival in Spain in 822 of Ziryab,
a musician formerly employed by the
Abbasid court in Baghdad, was a major
event. He introduced the Cordovan
elite to new modes of song, modifica-
tions to musical instruments, innova-
tions in court ceremony, new styles of
49

dress and hair, innovations in cuisine
and table etiquette, as well as an anti-
perspirant based on lead monoxide. He
was such a Promethean figure that it is
tempting to think of him as a mythi-
cal being, yet his career is well docu-
mented. Still, the stigma of Andalusian
provinciality was hard to shake off.
When, in the following century, the
Cordovan court poet Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih
produced Al-‘Iqd al-farid (The Unique
Necklace), a compendium of the best
prose and poetry from around the
world, he included no examples by An-
dalusians, with the exception of some
poetry of his own. As it turned out, the
cultured elite in Baghdad did not think
much of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih’s verses. The
vizier in Baghdad, Sahib ibn ‘Abbad,
declared that the anthology was “noth-
ing but our own merchandise sent back
to us.”
After the death of the caliph Hakam
II in 976 the succession passed to a
sequence of ineffectual fainéants and
child caliphs, and real power was ex-
ercised by al-Mansur, the hajib (cham-
berlain). He was a vigorous general who
campaigned twice a year in Christian
territory, but as Catlos observes, the
“goal was not conquest, but to generate
plunder, prevent the Christian kings
from taking the political initiative, and
cripple their rural economies.” Man-
sur’s campaigning was hardly a jihad,
for there were numerous Christians
serving as soldiers and guides in his
army.
In the decades that followed al-
Mansur’s death in 1002, the caliph-
ate of Cordova fell apart. Its ruin was
brought about not by Christian armies
but by Berber regiments that contended
for supremacy and loot. Ibn Hazm, the
historian, theologian, and poet, wrote
of the capital’s desolation:
I stood upon the ruins of our
house, its traces wiped out, its signs
erased, its familiar spots vanished.
Decay had turned its cultivated
bloom to sterile waste. In savagery
after society, ugliness after beauty,
wolves howled and devils played
in the haunts of ghosts and dens
of wild beasts that had once been
luxurious and melodious.
Catlos devotes only a single para-
graph to the life and writings of Ibn
Hazm, in which he notes that Ibn Hazm
produced an encyclopedic work, the
Kitab al-fisal fi al-milal wa-al-ahwa’
wa-al-nihal (Book of the Distinctions
in the Religions, Heresies, and Sects,
also known as the Fisal), which com-
pared ancient and modern religions,
and that he also wrote a treatise on love,
the Tawq al-hamama (Ring Collar of
the Dove). Both are worth consulting.
The Fisal was based on wide reading
and was designed to demonstrate not
only the falsehood of all religions other
than Islam but also the wickedness and
folly of those interpretations of Islam
that differed from the strictly literalist
one he espoused. He never accepted
that Muslims who disagreed with him
might do so in good faith. Rather, their
disagreements were the willful and
vain products of disobedience of God’s
word. Though Ibn Hazm took enough
interest in Christianity to denounce it,
most Spanish Muslims did not bother.
On the other hand, his Tawq al-
hamama is a delightful book that can
still be read with great pleasure today,
dealing as it does with such matters as
50
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falling in love as the result of a dream,
keeping one’s love a secret, amorous
abjection in thrall to a beautiful slave
girl, and dying from unfulfilled love.
Ibn Hazm’s religious books were
burned by his enemies and he was im-
prisoned several times. It is striking
how often and how many books were
burned in al-Andalus. Hakim II is re-
ported to have assembled a library of
400,000 volumes in Cordova covering
all subjects and drawing on Greek,
Persian, and Indian wisdom, but al-
Mansur, the power behind the throne
of the last Umayyad caliphs, seeking
to please religious scholars and jurists,
had the library purged of books deal-
ing with astrology, philosophy, and
other sciences of the ancients, as well
as other immoral subjects. The of-
fending books were publicly burned.
Later, in 1106 and again in 1143, trea-
tises on theology and Sufism by the
great Eastern thinker al-Ghazali were
burned on the orders of the Almoravid
Berbers. In 1195, the philosopher and
leading critic of al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd
(known in Christendom as Averroes),
saw his books burned on the orders of
the Almohad Berber Abu Yusuf. In
the fourteenth century the Sufi trea-
tises composed by the statesman and
polymath Ibn al-Khatib were burned
in Spain before he was strangled in a
North African prison cell.
As the caliphate fell apart, what
was left of Muslim Spain was divided
among overlords who were known col-
lectively as taifa kings, or party kings.
Even in their own time they did not
enjoy a good reputation. According
to one contemporary poet, they were
“like pussycats, who puffing them-
selves up, / Imagine they can roar like
lions.” Catlos’s no less damning verdict
is that the kings were “strongmen who
were not even strong.” Yet the eleventh
and twelfth centuries were a great age
for philosophy, theology, and litera-
ture, and the political and military de-
cline of the taifa principalities did not
entail a cultural decline. Catlos’s ac-
count of Andalusian literary culture in
this period is brisk and less surefooted
than his coverage of politics and soci-
ety. About the increasing influence of
Arabic literature on the development
of European literature from the thir-
teenth century onward, he writes:
Now Arabo-Islamic epics, ro-
mances and folktales—many of
South Asian or Persian origin—
were translated, adapted, or other-
wise made their way into popular
literature. These included the Ka-
lila wa-dimna, a collection of fa-
bles; Sindibad, or Sendebar, the
tales of Sinbad the Sailor; the epic
of Alexander the Great; and tales
from The Thousand and One
Nights. Popular and didactic lit-
erature of the era, such as Ramon
Llull’s Book of the Beasts (1280s)
and The Tales of Count Lucanor,
written in 1335 by Don Juan Man-
uel, a nephew of Alfonso X, were
strongly influenced by these texts.
In fact, Arabic literature trans-
formed European fiction, both
through the borrowing of narra-
tives and through the appropria-
tion of the literary device of the
maqamat, or frame tale, the story-
within-a-story—the same device
used by Boccaccio in his Decam-
eron and by Chaucer in The Can- literary allusion to scrounge money
terbury Tales. from his audience before making
his escape. The best examples of the
Only some of this is correct. Kalila genre offer serious lessons in Koranic
wa-dimna, a collection of animal fa- exegesis, grammar, lexicography, and
bles, did circulate in medieval Spain, rhetoric. Although the maqama genre
and some of its stories were recycled in cannot really be seen as an ancestor
the Latin Disciplina Clericalis, a col- of the European frame tale, its resem-
lection of Eastern fables put together blance to the Spanish picaresque novel
in the early twelfth century by Petrus as it evolved in the sixteenth and seven-
Alfonso, a Spanish Jew who had con- teenth centuries has often been noted
verted to Christianity. But Sindibad (or by literary scholars.
Sendebar) doesn’t contain the tales of In the late eleventh century, the taifa
Sinbad the Sailor. It is a collection of kingdoms were losing ground to the
moral tales, probably of Persian origin, Christians. In 1085 Toledo fell to the
in which a queen tells stories with the Castilian Alfonso VI. The Spanish
aim of securing the execution of the Muslims appealed to the Almoravids in
prince who has rebuffed her advances, Morocco for assistance, but, though the
but a wise vizier tells other stories de- Almoravids won a great victory over
the Christians at Zallaqa, in southwest-
Spanish Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence/Art Resource
ern Spain, in 1086, they were later more
successful in annexing taifa kingdoms
than they were in resisting the Christian
Reconquista. The presentation of the
Almoravids as barbarous and fanati-
cal puritans has long been one of the
clichés of Spanish historiography. But
Catlos argues that the “dour” image
of them has been exaggerated and that
they were important patrons of the re-
ligious sciences: study of the Koran,
prophetic traditions, and religious law.
If they had been important patrons of
poetry rather than religion they would
probably have received more favorable
treatment by modern historians.
By the early twelfth century Al-
moravid control in the Maghreb was
being undermined by yet another re-
The philosopher Ibn Rushd, also known as ligiously inspired, puritanical Berber
Averroes; detail of Andrea di Bonaiuto’s movement, that of the Almohads. In
The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1145 the Almohad leader ‘Abd al-
1366 –1367 Mu’min, having taken over Almoravid
Morocco, sent an army across the
signed to save the youth’s life. The craft Straits and occupied most of what
and malice of women is a leading theme was left of Muslim Spain. In The Or-
of the stories told by the rival narra- nament of the World, María Rosa
tors. A version of this story cycle cer- Menocal described the Almohads as
tainly circulated in Spain in Latin and “even more fanatic” and as “Islamic
in Spanish, and an Arabic version was fundamentalists.” Catlos places less
eventually added to printed versions of emphasis on Almohad ideology and
The Thousand and One Nights. There argues that, though the Almohads did
seems to be no evidence that the stories for a time strictly enforce discrimina-
of Sinbad the Sailor circulated in me- tory measures against Jews and Chris-
dieval Spain. (At the beginning of the tians, sectarian attacks on non-Muslims
eighteenth century, Antoine Galland were more likely to have had economic
arbitrarily added the Sinbad stories to rather than religious motivations and,
his French translation of The Thou- contrary to some reports, Jewish com-
sand and One Nights, the first ever munities survived under Almohad rule.
available in Europe.) Moreover, despite the stern branch of
Although stories from what even- Islam espoused by the Almohads, the
tually would form the corpus of The great Muslim philosophers Ibn Tufayl
Thousand and One Nights, such as and Ibn Rushd wrote under the pa-
“The Ebony Horse” and “Abu’l-Husn tronage of the ruler Abu Ya’qub Yusuf
and His Slave-girl Tawaddud,” did cir- (though Yusuf’s son briefly gave in to
culate in medieval Spain, they appear pressure from the religious elite to exile
to have done so as freestanding stories, Ibn Rushd and have his books burned).
and they do not appear in the oldest
substantially surviving manuscript of
the Nights, dating from the fifteenth Slowly the Reconquista took on the
century (which was the one Galland quality of a crusade, with papal indul-
translated into French). Consequently gences and the creation of crusading
the wonderfully intricate and playful military orders. However, this Spanish
Chinese-box structure of the original crusade was punctuated by long inter-
core stories of the Nights was probably vals of peace, and Christian campaign-
quite unknown in medieval Spain. If ing was often halted by Muslim offers
one is looking for precedents for the of tribute. In 1212 Christians won a
framing of stories within a story, as great victory against the Almohad
found in Boccaccio or Chaucer, they army at the Battle of Las Navas de To-
may be discovered in Homer, Ovid, or losa. Though the Muslims were roundly
Petronius’s Satyricon. defeated, this battle was not decisive,
Maqamat (plural; maqama singular) and the Almohads continued to win
does not mean “frame tale.” It trans- fights against the Christians. The prob-
lates literally as “standings” and refers lem for Islamic Spain’s survival was
to a peculiarly Arabic genre of fiction that, broadly speaking, the Almohads
that features a series of performances in Spain fought in observance of jihad
by a wily and highly eloquent rogue in and for plunder and glory, but they
disguise who seeks to use rhetoric and did not actually campaign to regain
The New York Review

territory. They were more concerned
with conserving their territory in North
Africa. Yet colonization projects were
an important part of the Christian Re-
conquista. Castile and Aragon encour-
aged immigration from the south of
France, and military orders were orga-
nized not only to fight but also to culti-
vate the lands they occupied.
Cordova fell to the Christians in 1236,
Valencia in 1238, and Seville in 1248.
Eventually only the Nasrid Emirate of
Granada remained in Muslim hands. It
owed its survival in part to its numer-
ous heavily fortified strongholds in the
Sierra Nevada mountains. The late four-
teenth century was its Indian summer,
for this was when the spectacularly beau-
tiful Court of the Myrtles and Court of
the Lions were added to the Palace of
the Alhambra. It was also when Lisan al-
Din Ibn al-Khatib, the vizier of the Nas-
rid ruler Muhammad V, produced his
Sufi treatise, as well as poetry, maqamat,
letters, chronicles, a travel narrative,
and a biographical dictionary.
The Crime of the Century
The February 2015 Assassination
of Boris Nemtsov and the Flawed
Trial of His Alleged Killers:
An Exploration of Russia’s
“Crime of the 21st Century”
by John B. Dunlop.
Stuttgart: Ibidem,
197 pp., $40.00 (paper)
Nemtsov
a documentary film written and
directed by Vladimir V. Kara-Murza
The Man Who Was Too Free
a documentary film written
by Mikhail Fishman and
directed by Vera Krichevskaya
Last November The Economist took
President Trump to task for dismiss-
ing the probable involvement of Saudi
crown prince Mohammed bin Salman
in the murder of the Saudi journalist
Jamal Khashoggi: “Mr. Trump’s gloss-
ing over the murder of a peaceful critic
is an alarming departure for Amer-
ica. . . . Previous presidents have sought
to balance moral values and national
interests.”
Trump has been equally dismissive
regarding Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s alleged sponsorship of politi-
cal murders, saying in December 2015:
“Nobody has proven that he’s killed
anyone. . . . He’s always denied it.” And
in October 2018, after being pressed
into finally admitting that Putin was
“probably” involved in political assas-
sinations, Trump added a caveat: “It’s
not in our country.”
Trump’s reactions are part of his
established pattern of excusing the
Kremlin’s misdeeds. But his reluctance
to address Russia’s political murders
is not a sharp departure from past
presidents’ responses. After President
George W. Bush asked Putin about the
October 2006 killing of the journal-
ist Anna Politkovskaya in a telephone
call just a few days after it occurred,
he was apparently reassured by Putin’s
March 21, 2019
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Ibn al-Khatib was the last great
chronicler of Muslim Spain, and so the
history of subsequent Nasrid rulers of
Granada is somewhat conjectural. It
has to be constructed from Christian
sources. For example, it is uncertain
whether Muhammad X ever reigned,
though Muhammad IX and Muham-
mad XI certainly did. For some time
the Nasrid rulers managed to set one
Christian kingdom against another and
buy them off with tribute. But the mar-
riage in 1469 of Ferdinand of Aragon
and Isabella of Castile put an end to
this tactic. The increasing effective-
ness of cannon in siege warfare was
no less damaging to the Nasrids. In
1492 Granada surrendered, and Mu-
hammad XII, also known as Boabdil,
handed over the keys of the Alhambra
to the Catholic monarchs.
Muhammad XII had agreed to terms
that included the free practice of the
Muslim religion by his subjects, but
those terms would not be honored. In
1499, Cisneros, the archbishop of To-
Amy Knight
Police officers detaining opposition leader Boris Nemtsov
during a rally in central Moscow, January 2010
promise that there would be a thor-
ough investigation (there never was
one). Despite the fact that only weeks
later the exiled Putin critic Alexander
Litvinenko announced on his London
deathbed that he had been poisoned
by Putin, Bush welcomed Putin at his
summer home in Kennebunkport,
Maine, the following summer, so that
the two could “work on their personal
relationship” and enjoy a ride in Bush’s
speedboat.
President Obama’s response to the
most shocking of all Russian political
murders, the February 27, 2015, shoot-
ing of the opposition leader Boris
Nemtsov, was also muted. Although
he immediately condemned the crime
and called on the Russian government
to conduct an impartial, prompt, and
transparent investigation, Obama did
not follow up on a Senate resolution in-
troduced on March 4, 2015, by John Mc-
Cain and Lindsey Graham urging him to
seek a United Nations Security Council
resolution that would establish an inde-
pendent investigation into the assassina-
ledo, had five thousand books publicly
burned in Granada. This sparked a
series of rebellions in the countryside,
and after they had been suppressed the
defeated Muslims were forced to con-
vert to Christianity or leave the coun-
try. But suspicions remained about
those Muslims, known as Moriscos,
or “little Moors,” who had apparently
converted, and in 1609 they too were
forcibly expelled. In the long century
that had preceded their expulsion, the
Inquisition conducted a culture war
against such detestable things as wash-
ing, the veil, the avoidance of pork, and
writings in Arabic. In the sixteenth-
century topographical compendium
of marvels, Tuhfat al-muluk (Precious
Gift of Kings), its Egyptian author, Ibn
Zunbul, described meeting a Span-
ish Muslim who told him that all the
Arabic manuscripts in Spain had been
locked up in a house and that, if one put
one’s ear to the keyhole, one could hear
the munching of bookworms feasting
on Arabic literature.
Reuters
tion. (It eventually died in the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations.)
Now, four years later, John Dunlop’s
remarkable investigation has shed new
light on the Nemtsov assassination, al-
though he cautions that “there remains
much that needs to be learned concern-
ing how the crime was committed.”
Dunlop calls it the “Russian crime of
the twenty-first century.” Not only was
Nemtsov brazenly shot to death at the
Kremlin’s doorstep; as the Russian
documentary films Nemtsov and The
Man Who Was Too Free make clear, he
had a huge influence on Russian poli-
tics for two and a half decades. In the
words of a former Nemtsov colleague:
“He was like some sort of meteorite. . . .
He soared, lit everything up—and then
he was gone.”
Born in Sochi in 1959, Nemtsov
grew up in Gorky (renamed Nizhny
Novgorod in 1990), where he trained as
a physicist. He earned his Ph.D. at age
twenty-five and within just a few years
Catlos has produced an excellent po-
litical history of al-Andalus. Still, he
says, “no book can claim in good faith
to be the ‘definitive,’ ‘true,’ or ‘real’ his-
tory of Islamic Spain; there are simply
too many factors to account for and
too many uncertainties clouding the
past.” This must be right. New sources
may emerge, and certainly there are
more Arabic sources on al-Andalus
than have so far been properly stud-
ied. As Catlos is well aware, histories
are written for their times, and each
age poses its own questions about the
past. It is hard not to read Kingdoms
of Faith without reflecting on such con-
temporary matters as Spain’s national
and regional identities, multicultural-
ism, assimilation, and repatriation. It
has been said that history is written by
the victors, but when one looks at the
historiography of medieval Spain one
is struck by the readiness of so many
modern historians to champion the
“losers” and even to question what vic-
tory really meant.
had published more than sixty schol-
arly articles. According to his widow,
Raisa, “physics was his life. He couldn’t
talk about anything else.” But Nemtsov
then got caught up in the civic activism
that began to flourish in his country in
the late 1980s and joined—along with
his mother, a physician—a movement
to protest the construction of a nuclear
plant outside Gorky.
In March 1990, Nemtsov was elected
to represent Gorky in the Russian par-
liament (then called the Supreme So-
viet). He was the only non-Communist
candidate in a field of thirteen. In his
first television appearance of the cam-
paign, he stated: “I can only promise
one thing: I will not lie.” Important
elements of his bold platform were the
restriction of the powers of the KGB
and the end of the Communist Party’s
domination of politics. His fellow dem-
ocrat Grigory Yavlinsky observed that
Nemtsov, a natural orator, was “one of
the youngest, most brilliant, most intel-
ligent and most interesting people in
the parliament.”
Nemtsov appeared at the side of
Boris Yeltsin during the dramatic con-
frontation with the plotters of the coup
against Mikhail Gorbachev in August
1991—a show of support that Yeltsin
rewarded by appointing Nemtsov, then
only thirty-two, head of the Nizhny
Novgorod regional government. These
were difficult times in Russia. The
economy had broken down, with re-
sources severely depleted, and many
cities, including Nizhny Novgorod,
were in serious decline. Nemtsov ini-
tiated an ambitious program of eco-
nomic reform, hailed nationwide,
which included privatization of state
companies and rebuilding the region’s
infrastructure. When new roads were
constructed, he inspected them per-
sonally. According his deputy, Yuri
Lebedev: “He would get behind the
wheel of a Volga, after putting a glass
of vodka on the hood, and, if he could
drive two kilometers without spilling
51

JUST IN TIME FOR SPRING!
Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking
rounds up the most memorable walker-
writers from the 1700s to the modern day,
from country hikers to urban strollers, from
the rationalists to the truly outlandish.
“Perhaps a walk is best revealed by
nonfiction accounts. [Beneath My Feet]
is a selection of these, spanning the
centuries, arranged loosely by
theme. It features Petrarch in the
1330s, various golden ages of
pedestrianism—Romantic, Victorian
and Edwardian—and nods to the
present day, with its own train of wan-
derers. All told, thirty-six of them will
head over open fields, wild places,
parks and gardens, and cities.”
—From Duncan Minshull’s introduction
“Here is a book as certain to lift the
spirits as the activity to which it is
dedicated: going for a walk. Beneath
My Feet is a collection of writings on
pedestrianism, shrewdly selected by
Duncan Minshull, who, as the editor
of two previous books on the subject,
is emerging as the laureate of walking.”
—Andrew Martin, Country Life
“We at the Idler are great fans of
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the footsteps of George Sand, Robert
Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf, Will
Self and others, and discover why
they saw walking as key to their
creativity and wellbeing. As St.
Augustine puts it, ‘solvitur ambulando
—it is solved by walking.’” —Idler
BENEATH MY FEET
WRITERS ON WALKING
Introduced and edited by
Duncan Minshull
Linen clothbound hardcover with
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On sale April 2nd
New York Review Books is the
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52
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the vodka, he would officially accept
the new road.”
Tall, handsome, and charismatic,
Nemtsov had an exceptional connec-
tion with ordinary people, delighting
crowds at rallies with spontaneous
jokes or impromptu dancing. In the
words of Lebedev: “He charmed ev-
eryone, from grandmothers to young
girls, young and old men. . . . He knew
how to talk to people.” In 1995, despite
the nationwide decline in the popular-
ity of democratic reformers and the
resurgence of the Communists, he was
elected governor of Nizhny Novgorod.
Yeltsin was by this time referring
to Nemtsov as his heir apparent, even
telling President Clinton when he in-
troduced him to Nemtsov in Washing-
ton in September 1994: “Keep an eye
on this young man. One day he will
be president of Russia.” But Yeltsin’s
popularity declined sharply as the 1996
presidential elections approached, and
former economic minister Yegor Gai-
dar tried to convince Nemtsov to run
for president, telling him: “You are the
only one of us reformers who can talk
with the people, with the babushkas
[grandmothers].” Nemtsov responded:
“I will never be president. The presi-
dent has to send people to die.”
Nemtsov was not afraid to confront
Yeltsin when he objected to the presi-
dent’s policies. In January 1996, after
the Kremlin unleashed a war in Chech-
nya, he collected more than a million
signatures protesting Russia’s conduct
of the war, drove a truck with the docu-
ments to Moscow, and delivered them
to the Kremlin. Yeltsin was so angry
that he refused to speak to Nemtsov for
months afterward.
But Yeltsin, who valued Nemtsov’s
skills as a politician, overcame his
anger and in 1997 invited him to be a
first deputy prime minister, along with
Anatoly Chubais, in his new cabinet.
With so much left to accomplish in
Nizhny Novgorod, Nemtsov refused the
offer. It was not until Yeltsin’s daughter
Tatyana made a special trip to see him
and spent six hours tearfully begging
him to reconsider that he agreed to ac-
cept the position.
As it turns out, Nemtsov’s decision
to join the Kremlin government was a
huge mistake. In the words of the jour-
nalist Yevgenia Albats, a close friend of
his: “The move to Moscow ruined Bo-
ris’s career. He would have gone on to
be Yeltsin’s successor in 1999 had he not
made that move.” Once in the Kremlin,
the uncompromising Nemtsov took on
the oligarchs, who were gobbling up the
state’s resources at bargain-basement
prices, and vowed that there would
be “no more crony privatization.” In
particular, he vigorously opposed a
noncompetitive auction of the telecom
company Svyazinvest, which the oli-
garchs Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir
Gusinsky were set to purchase at well
below its value.
After the company was sold to the
highest bidder, Berezovsky and Gusin-
sky were outraged. They designated
Nemtsov “enemy number one” and
used their control of two main televi-
sion stations to launch a propaganda
campaign against him. Nemtsov’s
weakness for sex made him an easy tar-
get, and before long televised reports
of his “nude frolicking” with women
caused his poll ratings to plummet. In
August 1998 the Russian government
defaulted on its debt and devalued the
ruble, forcing Yeltsin to dismiss most
of his government. Although he asked
Nemtsov to remain in his post, Nemtsov
resigned and, as the democratic oppo-
sitionist Aleksei Navalny later pointed
out, “was blamed for all the horrors
and problems of Yeltsin’s team.”
N emtsov recalled in his 2007 mem-
oir, Confessions of a Rebel,1 that Yel-
tsin’s appointment of Putin as prime
minister—and thus Yeltsin’s designated
heir—in August 1999 came as an un-
pleasant shock, mainly because Putin
was a product of the KGB. Nonetheless,
Nemtsov, who had become a leader of
the newly formed Union of Right Forces
(SPS) party, praised Putin publicly as
“a capable, experienced and intelli-
gent person.” Nemtsov was elected as a
deputy to the state Duma in December
1999, and he abstained when the SPS
voted to support Putin’s candidacy as
president in 2000, but he then worked
with the new president on a friendly
basis, in large part because Chubais,
now co-chairman of the SPS, insisted on
a conciliatory approach to Putin.
Whatever illusions Nemtsov had
about Putin, they quickly faded as
Putin began a systematic assault on
the media and grossly mishandled such
crises as the Kursk nuclear subma-
rine disaster in 2000 and the Moscow
Dubrovka Theater hostage-taking in
2002. After the SPS failed to gain seats
in the 2003 Duma elections, Nemtsov
became a political outsider and shifted
to the streets, where he campaigned
loudly against the corruption and au-
thoritarianism of the Putin regime
and was frequently arrested and often
imprisoned for fifteen days (the usual
sentence for organizing an illegal pro-
test). Video footage of Nemtsov being
manhandled by police and shoved into
paddy wagons was a grim foretelling
of what the future held for him. Once,
while sharing a prison cell with Na-
valny, Nemtsov explained to him why
he continued to subject himself to such
hardships: “I want to be able to respect
myself.” Nemtsov and Navalny joined
forces in 2011–2012, when they led huge
protests—the largest since the collapse
of the USSR—against voting fraud in
the 2011 Duma election and against Pu-
tin’s 2012 reelection to the presidency.
Meanwhile Nemtsov began produc-
ing meticulously documented reports
on Kremlin corruption 2 and traveled to
Washington to urge the US Congress
to pass the Magnitsky Act, which sanc-
tioned Russian officials responsible for
the 2009 prison death of the Russian
lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Later, after
the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea,
Nemtsov lobbied hard to convince
Western governments to impose sanc-
tions on members of the Russian gov-
ernment. At the time of his murder,
Nemtsov was about to publish a scath-
ing indictment of Russia’s military in-
volvement in Ukraine, “Putin and the
War,” and was organizing an antiwar
protest, scheduled for March 1, 2015.
These activities alone gave Putin and
the Kremlin plenty of reason to want
1
Ispoved’ buntaria (Moscow: Partisan,
2007).
2
On the reports, see my reviews of
Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov’s
Putin: The Results and Boris Nemtsov
and Leonid Martynyuk’s Winter Olym-
pics in the Subtropics in these pages,
May 15, 2008, and September 26, 2013.
Nemtsov dead. But for Putin, there may
also have been personal considerations.
Nemtsov did not hesitate to express his
contempt for him publicly, often with
sarcasm. In a 2013 interview, Nemtsov
joked about Putin’s small stature and
remarked that “all Russia’s fierce ty-
rants have been small—Ivan the Ter-
rible, Lenin, Stalin.” Later, in April
2014, when asked about Putin by a
Ukrainian journalist, Nemtsov blurted
out: “Fuck your Vladimir Putin!” The
journalist then posted the interview on
YouTube. According to Albats, “He
was afraid of being killed. And he was
trying to convince himself, and me,
that they wouldn’t touch him because
he [had been] a member of the Russian
government, a vice premier, and they
wouldn’t want to create a precedent.”
Dunlop, the author of two pathbreak-
ing studies of Russian terrorist inci-
dents, 3 presents convincing evidence
of Kremlin involvement in—and in-
deed direction of—Nemtsov’s murder.
Within six days of the murder, Russian
police had rounded up and charged five
men from Chechnya, suggesting that
the authorities had advance warning of
the crime. In fact, as Dunlop shows, the
FSB had been monitoring Nemtsov’s
movements for months, and thus would
have had to know that a group of
Chechens were following him.
The five were convicted and sen-
tenced to long prison terms in June
2017, after a nine-month trial, reported
on in detail by the Russian website
zone.media. Investigators initially put
out the theory that the Chechens were
motivated by revenge because of an
anti-Muslim statement Nemtsov had al-
legedly made after the Charlie Hebdo
killings in Paris. But when it emerged
that the Chechens had moved to Mos-
cow in October 2014 (before the Charlie
Hebdo attack in January), supposedly
to start tailing him and prepare for his
murder, this motive was discarded.
The Chechens were then said by
prosecutors to have taken on the job for
money—the equivalent of $234,000—
to be paid by the accused mastermind
of the plot, Ruslan Mukhudinov, who
was said to have fled to the United Arab
Emirates after the murder. There was
no explanation of how Mukhudinov, a
driver for Ruslan Geremeev, the dep-
uty commander of the crack Chechen
battalion Sever, acquired this money.
Geremeev himself was initially re-
garded as a suspect because two of the
accused were members of Sever, which
was subordinate to the Internal Troops
of the Russian MVD (Ministry of In-
ternal Affairs), but controlled more
directly by Chechen president Ram-
zan Kadyrov. Also, Geremeev lived
with the Chechens in a rented Moscow
apartment. But amazingly, despite re-
quests from lawyers for the defense and
for Nemtsov’s family, Geremeev never
appeared in court.
Significantly, investigators and pros-
ecutors, all under Putin’s control, de-
3
See my review of Dunlop’s The Mos-
cow Bombings of September 1999:
Examinations of Russian Terrorist At-
tacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s
Rule in these pages, November 22,
2012. See also my review of Dunlop’s
The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan
Hostage Crises: A Critique of Russian
Counter-Terrorism in The Times Liter-
ary Supplement, May 19, 2006.
The New York Review

liberately withheld videotape evidence
of the crime. Nemtsov was shot just be-
fore midnight while walking across the
Bolshoi Moskvoretskii Bridge with his
Ukrainian girlfriend, Anna Duritskaya.
(After initial questioning, Duritskaya
returned to Kiev and was not called to
testify at the trial, again despite the urg-
ings of the defense.) The bridge stands
at the foot of the Kremlin walls, an
area under extensive camera surveil-
lance by the Federal Protective Service
(FSO). Yet the FSO, headed at the time
by Putin’s crony from the St. Petersburg
KGB, Evgeny Murov, claimed that its
more than a dozen CCTV cameras were
directed at the area inside the Kremlin
walls, not on the bridge itself.
A Chechen named Zaur Dadaev,
a member of the Sever battalion, was
said by prosecutors to have fired six
shots at Nemtsov from behind. But
this claim conflicted with evidence
from a twenty-four-hour camera
belonging to a Russian television
station (TV Center) across the Mos-
cow River. The camera captured
foggy footage of someone running
up to Nemtsov and Duritskaya just
as a garbage truck (initially claimed
to be a snowplow) blocked the
view of him for two seconds. The
film, posted on the Internet, then
showed the man being picked up
by a waiting car and whisked away.
As defense lawyers and commen-
tators pointed out, it would have
been impossible for the shooter to
fire six bullets in just two seconds
from what was alleged to have been Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov with Duma member remeev’s boss Zolotov nor Kadyrov
a Makarov semiautomatic pistol.
(The weapon was never recovered.)
Subsequently, another video was
found on the Internet by Igor Murzin,
a St. Petersburg lawyer and a specialist
on road-monitoring video systems, who
took it upon himself to investigate the
Nemtsov case. (The presiding judge,
Yuri Zhitnikov, who was requested by
a Nemtsov family lawyer to recuse him-
self on the grounds that he was under
“outside influence,” refused to allow
the jury to see the video.) The film in
question, recorded on the dashcam of
Alexandr Kalugin, who was driving on
the bridge just after the initial shots
were fired at Nemtsov, showed a man
(who later identified himself at the trial
as Evgeny Molodykh) walking up to
Nemtsov’s body, then over to the gar-
bage truck, and then back over to “fin-
ish off” the gravely wounded Nemtsov.
The Kalugin videotape also showed
several other witnesses in strategic
places on the bridge at the time of the
murder, none of whom were either iden-
tified or interviewed by the prosecu-
tion. Presumably they were employees
of the Russian Federal Security Service
(FSB), who were following Nemtsov
at the time of his murder. As Dunlop
notes, “any attempts by defense attor-
neys or by Nemtsov family lawyers to
mention their existence were quashed
by the presiding judge.”
Molodykh, who had disappeared
after initial questioning by investiga-
tors, unexpectedly turned up at the trial
in May 2017, claiming that he had been
an innocent bystander at the crime
scene. He described a man resembling
Dadaev as the first and only shooter.
Dadaev had initially confessed to the
killing, but later retracted his statement
on the grounds that he had been tor-
tured, which was confirmed by mem-
bers of the Kremlin’s advisory council
on human rights, who visited Dadaev
March 21, 2019
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in prison soon after his arrest. Dunlop
rules out the possibility that Dadaev
was the first shooter, pointing out that
he had a good alibi. A videotape from
a camera at the entrance to his apart-
ment building showed that he was there
at the time of the murder. (The judge
excluded this tape from evidence at the
trial, on the grounds that the camera’s
timer was supposedly damaged.)
No murder weapons were found by
police, and the claim by FSB ballistic
analysts that the six bullets all came
from a single gun was challenged by
an outside expert called by Dadaev’s
lawyer. This expert concluded that
because investigators at the scene had
mishandled ballistic evidence, it was
Artur Chilingarov at the Kremlin, November 2018
not possible to establish the weapons
that fired the bullets.
D unlop offers several theories—put
forth by lawyers, including Murzin,
the American journalist David Sat-
ter, and Russian political commenta-
tors—of who orchestrated the crime,
with the main suspicions centering on
the Chechen president, Ramzan Kady-
rov, and Putin. Dunlop comes down
on the side of those who believe that
Kadyrov’s Chechens did participate
in the murder, together with the FSB,
despite Dadaev’s apparent innocence
in the actual shooting, and posits that
another member of the Sever battalion,
Beslan Shavanov, might have been the
first shooter. (Shavanov left Moscow
the day after the murder and suppos-
edly blew himself up with a grenade
while being apprehended by police in
Grozny.) The presence of the Chech-
ens in Moscow during the months be-
fore the murder and their hasty retreat
from the city afterward strongly sug-
gest their involvement. Also, we know
that Kadyrov in the past has used hit
squads to eliminate his own and Pu-
tin’s opponents, including the Chechen
journalist Natalia Estemirova and pos-
sibly Anna Politkovskaya, both highly
critical of him and Putin. (It was Polit-
kovskaya who labeled Kadyrov “the
Kremlin’s Chechen dragon.”) Signifi-
cantly, although Dunlop does not men-
tion this, Kadyrov once told Nemtsov
to his face that he deserved to be killed,
after which Nemtsov recalled that “in
his eyes I saw hatred.”
But Kadyrov would never carry out
such a high-profile crime without being
ordered to do so by Putin. As Akhmed
Zakaev, the head of the Chechen gov-
ernment in exile, observed: “Kadyrov
can do what he wants in Chechnya,
but not in Moscow or Russia.” And
Nemtsov’s close associate Vladimir
Milov, a former deputy minister in the
Russian government, noted that “by
doing anything to Nemtsov [on his
own] Kadyrov would be crossing a red
line and entering the territory under
Daddy’s [Putin’s] jurisdiction.”
As Dunlop’s investigation reveals,
the Nemtsov murder seems to have
involved a Kremlin power struggle. In
defiance of Putin, the FSB, after round-
ing up Kadyrov’s men, tried to impli-
cate the apparent organizers of the
crime, Kadyrov and his protector Vik-
tor Zolotov, who headed the MVD In-
ternal Troops at the time and was also
a close Putin ally from St. Peters-
Mikhail Metzel/ TASS /Getty Images
burg. The FSB had long wanted to
curtail the power of Kadyrov, who
rules Chechnya like a fiefdom and
oversteps his bounds in speaking
out on Russia’s foreign and secu-
rity policy. Putin’s unexplained dis-
appearance for ten days after the
murder, during which the Kremlin
announced that he had awarded
Kadyrov a high state honor, sug-
gested that he was under pressure.
But he weathered the storm.
Putin’s powerful Investigative
Committee, headed by his crony
Aleksandr Bastrykin, managed to
prevent Kadyrov’s protégé Gere-
meev from being interrogated by
prosecutors, allowing him to disap-
pear—either in Chechnya or the
United Arab Emirates. Neither Ge-
was ever questioned. In fact, Putin
created a new National Guard the
next year and appointed Zolotov its
chief, as well as elevating him to pro-
visional membership on his National
Security Council. As for Kadyrov, with
Putin’s strong endorsement he was re-
elected Chechen president in September
2016 with 98 percent of the popular vote.
Putin, it seems, needs Kadyrov, who has
just presided over another crackdown
on gay men in Chechnya, not only to
keep the restive Chechen people firmly
in line but also to eliminate Putin’s en-
emies should he be called upon.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled
former Russian oligarch who was ar-
rested by Putin’s police in 2003 and
languished in prison for ten years,
observed of the Nemtsov murder: “I
think Boris would have wanted to die
this way . . . on the bridge leading to the
Kremlin, shot by a real enemy, not by
accident. It’s a good death.” But above
all, Nemtsov, who so valued the truth,
would have wanted the persons who
ordered the murder brought to justice,
and clearly this will not happen with
Putin in the Kremlin.
On February 27, 2018, the Washing-
ton, D.C., City Council named a block
of Wisconsin Avenue in front of the
Russian embassy Boris Nemtsov Plaza.
Along with members of Congress, Vlad-
imir Kara-Murza, Nemtsov’s former
close colleague and the director of the
film Nemtsov, spoke at the ceremony.
An active Russian opposition politi-
cian, Kara-Murza has been the victim
of two near-fatal poisonings that he at-
tributes to the Kremlin. Yet he remains
optimistic: “The best possible tribute
to [Nemtsov] and to his legacy will be
a free and democratic Russia, and that
day will come.” When that day arrives,
it will be because of Russians like Kara-
Murza, who so courageously follow in
the footsteps of Boris Nemtsov.
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Eilís Dillon
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At the Border of the Novel
Lost Children Archive
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extracts from an autobiographical nar-
rative by the (actual) Mexican poet
Gilberto Owen (1904–1952). Luiselli
plays with reality and literary conven-
tion (in a manner familiar from Euro-
pean and Latin American fictions from
Pirandello to Borges to Bolaño) and
combines that play with an often ironic,
intermittently autofictional recording
of daily life’s more banal moments, in
a way popularized in contemporary
North American fiction by women
writers like Sheila Heti or Jenny Offill.
Luiselli’s second novel, The Story of
My Teeth (2015), is driven by the inimi-
table voice of Gustavo “Highway” Sán-
chez Sánchez, an auctioneer whose tall
tales about the literary provenance of
his own teeth (he claims one belonged
to Saint Augustine, for example, and
another to Virginia Woolf) and whose
different styles of storytelling salesman-
ship engage the reader in a lively narra-
tive dance. Filled with absurdist literary
allusions (“My uncle Marcelo Sánchez-
Proust once wrote in his diary . . .”), the
novel was in fact commissioned by the
Galería Jumex, an art gallery outside
Mexico City, as a serial narrative for
the workers at Mexico’s Jumex juice
54
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Claire Messud
Valeria Luiselli, New York City, January 2019; photograph by Patrice Helmar
factory, part of an exhibition exploring
connections between the gallery and
the Jumex empire. In an afterword, Lu-
iselli explains that “many of the stories
told in this book come from the work-
ers’ personal accounts—though names,
places and details are modified.” The
almost frothy quality of the book’s pac-
ing arises in part, surely, from its con-
ception as a serial: we are buoyed along
by episodic comic surprise.
Between The Story of My Teeth and
Lost Children Archive, Luiselli wrote
a slim, memorable volume of nonfic-
tion, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay
in Forty Questions (2017), expanded
from an essay that appeared in Free-
man’s magazine in 2016. (This was
her second nonfiction book: her first,
Sidewalks, from 2010, is an allusive
and, again, cleverly fragmented series
of meditations on topics ranging from
Joseph Brodsky’s grave, to bicycling,
to the empty spaces in Mexico City.) In
the course of applying for permanent
resident status in the United States,
Luiselli and her family took a road
trip in the summer of 2014, from New
York to Cochise County, Arizona, near
the US– Mexico border. The following
year, back in New York, she became
a volunteer interpreter in the federal
immigration court. The essay recon-
structs both Luiselli’s initiation into the
Patrice Helmar
world of immigration courts (including
the lives of several of the vast number
of children seeking asylum) and her
family’s journey across the southern
US by car. As Latin Americans, they
attract questions from policemen, one
of whom remarks sardonically, “So
you come all the way down here for
the inspiration.” She notes that “since
2006, around 120,000 migrants have
disappeared in their transit through
Mexico,” and that “between April 2014
and August 2015, more than 102,000
unaccompanied children had been de-
tained at the [US] border.” Horrified
by the statistics and the dark realities
they represent, Luiselli writes:
Perhaps the only way to grant any
justice—were that even possible—
is by hearing and recording those
stories over and over again so that
they come back, always, to haunt
and shame us. Because being
aware of what is happening in our
era and choosing to do nothing
about it has become unacceptable.
The conceptual overlap between Tell
Me How It Ends and Lost Children Ar-
chive is considerable. It is not new for a
writer to address a subject in multiple
forms. Camus famously did this when
grappling with his theory of the absurd,
writing three thematically linked but
profoundly different works: The Myth
of Sisyphus (a philosophical essay),
The Stranger (a novel), and Caligula (a
play). In his case the works are mark-
edly distinct, however, and each is fully
realized on its own terms; whereas
here, Luiselli’s novel, framed, like the
essay, by a family’s road trip across the
United States from New York to Ari-
zona, repurposes both literal and the-
matic material in ways that don’t feel
fully realized in the novel.
The novel’s unnamed characters—
the mother, the father, the ten-year- old
boy (the father’s child from a previous
relationship), and the five-year- old girl
(the mother’s child, also from a previ-
ous relationship)—reflect the configu-
ration of Luiselli’s own family in the
essay. Specific details from the essay
recur in the novel—from the idea of
the mother in “the copilot’s seat” to the
policeman’s quip about “the inspira-
tion”—as well as the presence of two
young sisters from Guatemala, whose
“grandmother sewed a ten- digit tele-
phone number on the collars of the
dress each girl would wear throughout
the entire trip.” In the essay, Luiselli
writes, “sometimes, when our children
fall asleep again, I look back at them,
or hear them breathe, and wonder. . . .
Were they to find themselves alone,
crossing borders and countries, would
my own children survive?” This ques-
tion will be posed, and then acted out,
in Lost Children Archive.
In the course of Luiselli’s work as an
interpreter, helping children answer an
NGO’s intake questionnaire (hence the
forty questions of her essay’s subtitle),
she learns that most children, coming
from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salva-
dor, and Honduras, have traveled “‘on
La Bestia,’ which literally means ‘the
beast,’ and refers to the freight trains
that cross Mexico, on top of which as
many as half a million Central Ameri-
can migrants ride annually.” In Lost
Children Archive, this journey—and
the subsequent crossing of the bor-
der into the American desert—forms
the subject of a fictional book within
the novel that the mother is read-
ing, Elegies for Lost Children by Ella
Camposanto. The embedded narrative
reaches toward myth, producing some
of the most arresting prose in Lost
Children Archive:
They were all asleep and did not
hear or see the woman who, also
asleep, rolled off the side of the roof
of their gondola. Tumbling awake
as she went down the jagged ridge,
she’d torn open her stomach on a
broken branch, and kept on falling,
until her body thumped flat, into
abrupt emptiness. The first living
thing to notice her, the next morn-
ing, was a porcupine, its spines erect
and its tummy ballooned on larch
and crab apples. It sniffed one of
her feet, the one that was unshod,
and then circled around her, unin-
terested, sniffing its way toward a
bunch of drying poplar catkins.
Lost Children Archive contains
many formal complexities, but its most
The New York Review

basic structural feature is a division
between the accounts of a mother and
her young stepson. The novel’s first half
is recounted by the mother, a Luiselli-
like figure who takes a road trip with
her family to Arizona. She and her hus-
band are both sound archivists, albeit
of different sorts: “We’d say that I was a
documentarist and he was a documen-
tarian, which meant that I was more
like a chemist and he was more like a
librarian.” The impetus for their jour-
ney is her husband’s documentary proj-
ect on the Apaches, for which he has
received a grant: “The material he had
to collect for this project was linked to
specific locations, but this soundscape
was going to be different. He called it
an ‘inventory of echoes,’ said it would
be about the ghosts of Geronimo and
the last Apaches.” Up till now the nar-
rator has been more practical and jour-
nalistic in her own approach, but she
too is pursuing a project, one she calls
a “Lost Children Archive,” the exact
substance of which is initially unclear:
I’m not sure that I’d ever be able
to—or should—get as close to my
sources as possible. Although a
valuable archive of the lost chil-
dren would need to be composed,
fundamentally, of a series of testi-
monies or oral histories that reg-
ister their own voices telling their
stories, it doesn’t seem right to turn
those children, their lives, into ma-
terial for media consumption.
The paradoxical nature of the endeavor
is apparent: the lost children, being
lost, cannot be heard. To hear these
stories, the narrator must find the chil-
dren, of course; next to this problem,
her concern for potential media exploi-
tation is surely secondary. The alterna-
tive is to invent their stories, in one way
or another.
As the family travels westward the
parents’ relationship deteriorates,
while the plight of the immigrant chil-
dren at the border grows increasingly
pressing. Availing herself of a grand
American trope—the road novel—Lu-
iselli turns it sideways: her protagonist
is no footloose American man, but the
immigrant mother of a nuclear fam-
ily. They travel not between coasts but
away from the city, from the center to
the margins—their progress, if it can be
called that, recalls The Sheltering Sky
more than On the Road. The reader is
privy to fairly little of their daily real-
ity, beyond the occasional diner expe-
rience or reference to their audiobook
choices (the opening sentence of Cor-
mac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel
The Road recurs, ominously). While
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would she then finally pay attention
to us?” He successfully dragoons his
sister into following him, and the two
set off into the inhospitable landscape,
armed only with maps, a compass, a
flashlight, and other sundries filched
from their parents.
This strand of the narrative is sus-
penseful, but its progression and reso-
lution make clear that we are in the
realm of consoling—and not entirely
convincing—fantasy rather than in that
of truth. The children’s trajectory is in-
terspersed, ever more heavily, with the
fictional novel-within-a-novel, Elegies
for Lost Children. Before the children’s
departure, their mother has realized
that “they are the ones who are telling
the story of the lost children. They’ve
been telling it all along, over and over
again in the back of the car”; appro-
priately, then, her stepson ultimately
manages—as if, of narrative necessity,
living out his stepmother’s projection—
to conflate his and his sister’s story with
that of the children in the Elegies. In
embarking on their journey, they are
seeking the actual lost children (the
two young sisters from Guatemala);
they have themselves become lost chil-
dren; and the lost children in the Ele-
gies seem real to the boy. This melding
culminates in the boy’s extended,
highly literary first-person stream- of-
consciousness section near the novel’s
end. The children walk following
the same eagles the lost children
now see as they walk north into the
desert plain, beating muscled wings,
threading in and out of black thun-
derclouds, they see them with their
bare eyes, the five of them, as they
walk onward, under the sun, keep-
ing close together and silent, in a
tight horde, deeper and deeper into
the silent heart of light, saying noth-
ing and hearing almost nothing, be-
cause nothing can be heard except
the monotonous sound of their own
footsteps, on and on across these
deadlands, never stopping because
if they stop, they will die, this they
know, this they’ve been told . . .
This bow to modernism—the passage
is drawn from a sentence that contin-
ues for almost twenty pages—is but
one of the novel’s many stylistic intri-
cacies. Its intention is clear (to unite,
through the boy’s voice, all the lost
children), yet its effect is not ultimately
transcendent.
A commitment to formal innovation
has been central to Luiselli’s work;
in this regard Lost Children Archive
is clearly linked to its predecessors.
Faces in the Crowd is made up of brief
sections—fragments—told from shift-
ing perspectives. More adventurous,
MAX HAVELAAR
OR, THE COFFEE
AUCTIONS OF THE DUTCH
TRADING COMPANY
Multatuli
Introduction by
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
A new translation by
Ina Rilke and David McKay
Paperback • $17.95
Also available as an e-book
Max Havelaar is the March selection
of the NYRB Classics Book Club.
To join, visit www.nyrb.com or
call 1–800–354–0050
UNCERTAIN
MANIFESTO
Frédéric Pajak
A new translation from the French
by Donald Nicholson-Smith
A NEW TRANSLATION OF A MASTERPIECE
OF DUTCH LITERATURE
A brilliantly inventive fiction that is also a work
of burning political outrage, Max Havelaar tells
the story of a renegade Dutch colonial admin-
istrator’s ultimately unavailing struggle to end
the exploitation of the Indonesian peasantry.
Havelaar’s impassioned exposé is framed by
the fatuous reflections of an Amsterdam coffee
trader, Drystubble, into whose hands it has fallen.
Thus a tale of the jungles and villages of Indonesia
is interknit with one of the houses and ware-
houses of bourgeois Amsterdam, where the tidy
profits from faraway brutality not only accrue but
are counted as a sign of God’s grace.
Multatuli (meaning “I have suffered greatly”) was
the pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker, and his
novel caused a political storm when it came out
in Holland.
Max Havelaar, however, is as notable for its art
as it is for its politics. Layering not only different
stories but different ways of writing—including
plays, poems, lists, letters, and a wild accumu-
lation of notes—to furious, hilarious, and dis-
concerting effect, this masterpiece of Dutch
literature confronts the fixities of power with the
protean and subversive energy of the imagination.
“D. H. Lawrence shrewdly understood Douwes
Dekker as above all a satirist and ironist. He
wrote. . . ‘The great dynamic force in Multatuli is as
it was, really, in Jean Paul and in Swift and Gogol,
and in Mark Twain, hate, a passionate, honourable
hate.’. . . Max Havelaar amply confirms this esti-
mation and shows the reader how hatred creates
a narrative bridge across two continents. . . A
call, not for an antifeudal insurrection of natives
against their abusive chiefs, but rather for the
overthrow of colonialism itself.”
—Benedict Anderson
Available in bookstores, call (646) 215-2500,
or visit www.nyrb.com
The writer and artist Frédéric Pajak was ten when
he began to dream of “a book mixing words
and pictures: snippets of adventure, random
memories, maxims, ghosts, forgotten heroes,
trees, the raging sea,” but it was not until he
was in his forties that this dream took form as
Uncertain Manifesto.
The utterly original book that he produced is
a memoir born of reading and a meditation on
the lives and ideas, the motivations, feelings,
and fates of some of Pajak’s heroes: Samuel
Beckett and the artist Bram van Velde and, espe-
cially, Walter Benjamin, whose travels to Moscow,
Naples, and Ibiza, whose experiences with hash-
ish, whose faltering marriage and love affairs and
critique of modern experience Pajak re-creates
and reflects on in word and image. Pajak’s moody
black-and-white drawings accompany the text
throughout, though their bearing on it is often
indirect and all the more absorbing for that.
Between word and image, the reader is drawn
into a mysterious space that is all Pajak’s as he
seeks to evoke vanished histories and to resist
we are granted charming glimpses of The Story of My Teeth, divided into 
 • 
a modern world more and more given over to a
the children, their gestures, questions, seven books (separated by marbled 


present without a past.
and games, the narrator’s husband re- papers), includes epigraphs in various




mains largely opaque, present chiefly
in his pedagogical role, educating the
children about the Apaches, a history
of colonial violence and slaughter.
The second half of the novel is mostly
narrated by the woman’s unnamed
stepson, addressing his younger sister.
Dismayed by the parents’ unraveling
marriage and his stepmother’s grow-
ing obsession with the lost children, he
hatches a plan to run away: “I wanted
to remind her that even though those
children were lost, we were not lost, we
were there, right there next to her. And
it made me wonder, what if we got lost,
March 21, 2019
forms, auction lot descriptions, a series
of photographs, and a timeline (com-
piled by Christina MacSweeney). The
new novel, still more formally compli-
cated, is divided into four parts, each
subdivided into sections (among them
seven archival “boxes,” the contents
of which are either listed or contained
in the text, including photographs,
maps, and news cuttings), and further
into subsections. Among these are
fifteen parenthetical sections of the
Elegies by Ella Camposanto, whose
surname means “cemetery” in Spanish
and is also the title of W. G. Sebald’s
Published with the support of
the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
“[Pajak] meditates on the need to
remember the past in order
to understand the present. . .
A complex portrait of the
nature and power of narrative.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Available in bookstores, call (646) 215-2500,
or visit www.nyrb.com
55
 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

posthumous book of essays. The major- I’m not sure, though, what “for Shouldn’t I simply document, like

!
ity of the subsections have less clearly later” means anymore. Something the serious journalist I was when

%
50 2019 directive titles—such as “MAPS,” “IN- changed in the world. Not too long I first started working in radio
VE
VENTORY,” or “COPULA & COPULA- ago, it changed, and we know it. and sound production? Realis-
New York TION.” The reader will understand that We don’t know how to explain it tic concern: Maybe it is better to
SA

Review taxonomies, however apparently extra-

neous, are important to this text: they
Calendar effect the imposition of order upon
rampant disorder. It is presumably
possible, though mercifully not neces-
sary, to interpret the novel according to
these titles.
Such games and allusions are impor-
tant to the texture of Lost Children
Archive. Luiselli’s stylistic freedoms—
roaming from the
yet, but I think we all can feel it,
somewhere deep in our gut or in
our brain circuits. We feel time
differently. No one has quite been
able to capture what is happening
or say why. Perhaps it’s just that
we sense an absence of future, be-
cause the present has become too
overwhelming, so the future has
become unimaginable. And with-
out future, time feels like only an
accumulation. . . . Perhaps if we
keep the children’s stories as far
away from the media as possible,
anyway, because the more atten-
tion a potentially controversial
issue receives in the media, the
more susceptible it is to becoming
politicized, and in these times,
a politicized issue is no longer a
matter that urgently calls for com-
mitted debate in the public arena
but rather a bargaining chip that
parties use frivolously in order to
move their own agen-

Valeria Luiselli
adult narrator’s highly das forward. Constant
realistic (and, one sus- concerns: Cultural ap-
pects, often autobio- propriation, pissing all
graphical) reflections over someone else’s
2019 David Levine Calendar: to the child’s frankly toilet seat, who am I to
Enlightenment implausible fairy tale tell this story, micro-
$12.95 $6.48 adventure, to the dark managing identity poli-
myth-like storytelling tics, heavy-handedness,
of the Elegies—form am I too angry, am I
a patchwork designed mentally colonized by
simultaneously to re- Western- Saxon- white
flect and reinterpret categories, what’s the
our current reality. correct use of personal
The mother’s narra- pronouns, go light on
tive voice, in its vary- the adjectives, and oh,
ing registers, sounds who gives a fuck how
as natural as is possi- very whimsical phrasal
ble. Her thoughts me- verbs are?
ander between history
and the present day These reflections suggest
(“Searching online how hampered Luiselli
about the children’s may have felt in approach-
crisis, I find a New ing her intense and de-
York Times article manding factual material.
from a couple of years Serious and highly literary,
Shipping is FREE within the US! back, titled ‘Children passionately politically en-
Why not order one for yourself at the Border.’. . . No gaged, unwilling to rely on
and several for your friends? one thinks of those forms that feel to her out
Go to: shop.nybooks.com! children as conse- of date and insufficient,
quences of a histori- she is, at the same time,
cal war that goes back constrained by an aware-
decades”); personal ness of critiques that might
Name reminiscences (“And be leveled against her fic-
then the boy turned Photograph from Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive tion. For her fellow artists,
Address ten. We took him out the imposing reach of this
to a good restaurant, gave him presents found a new way to document it, project—both to acknowledge and
(no toys). I got him a Polaroid camera we might begin to understand this somehow to assimilate all of these
and several boxes of film, both black new way we experience space and questions—is invigorating and ab-
City/State/Zip
and white and color”); and literary and time. sorbing. It is also risky. As she en-
artistic analysis (of figures as varied deavors to marry fact-like fiction (the
Country
as Walt Whitman, Susan Sontag, and It seems logical to infer from this as- cross- country journey of a Luiselli-
J Check enclosed* Emmet Gowin). She recalls demon- tute observation that Luiselli’s novel like storyteller in the company of her
Charge my: J AMEX J Visa J MasterCard strating outside an immigration deten- itself endeavors to find a new way to family) with fairytale-like fiction (the
tion center on Varick Street in New “document” the present. In a digres- child’s adventure story, complete with
Credit Card Number
York, in the company of a priest named sion of impressive creative frankness, implausible happy ending), with dark
Father Juan Carlos. She remembers Luiselli’s character muses on the perils myth (the Elegies), with a strong po-
Expiration Date her mother leaving the family to join a of modern storytelling: litical intention that nevertheless aims
Mexican guerrilla movement when she to avoid propaganda, all the while
Signature herself was ten years old (something Political concern: How can a spinning formal complexity upon for-
that actually happened in Luiselli’s radio documentary be useful mal complexity, there is ultimately
Item Qty Price Total life). She tells us about a remarkable in helping more undocumented a sense that the center cannot hold.
2019 Calendar X $6.48 = $
(and real) educator named Stephen children find asylum? Aesthetic Art is an act of transformation: the
Haff, whose one-room schoolhouse problem: On the other hand, why passage of material through an imagi-
PLUS POSTAGE & HANDLING
within US per item FREE!
X $4.00 = $ 0.00
in Brooklyn, Still Waters in a Storm, should a sound piece, or any other native crucible, and the creation of
OR Canada per item X $5.00 = $
teaches underprivileged kids to trans- form of storytelling, for that mat- something new. That something new
OR Rest of World per item X $10.00 = $
late Cervantes and instructs them in ter, be a means to a specific end? must have its own integrity, must be
Latin. I should know, by now, that in- greater than the sum of its parts. Ca-
Orders to New York–add local Sales Tax =$
The first half of the novel reads less strumentalism, applied to any art mus’s explorations of the absurd in The
GRAND TOTAL $ like fiction than like a record of time form, is a way of guaranteeing re- Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus
spent in a café with a particularly inter- ally shitty results: light pedagogic measure the distinction between a nov-
* Check or US money order must be made payable to The
New York Review of Books in US dollars, drawn on a US bank esting friend—one whose observations material, moralistic young-adult elistic embodiment of human experi-
account. We cannot accept international money orders. are alternately delightful and tren- novels, boring art in general. ence and an essayistic distillation of
Please allow 1–2 weeks for delivery within the US and chant, unexpected and familiar; one Professional hesitance: But then thought. Many elements of Lost Chil-
2–3 weeks for delivery outside the US. whose presumption of her interlocu- again, isn’t art for art’s sake so dren Archive are extraordinary, and
tor’s intelligence and erudition is both often an absolutely ridiculous yet the ultimate act of transformation
Return this coupon to: Order Department,
flattering and quickening. One pas- display of intellectual arrogance? has not occurred. One might of course
sage, on our contemporary relation- Ethical concern: And why would contend that, in this ghastly time, such
435 Hudson Street, Suite 300, New York, NY 10014,
or for credit card orders only, call (646) 215-2500 or
ship to time, while not original (these I even think that I can or should a transformation is no longer possible;
visit shop.nybooks.com thoughts have been articulated in the make art with someone else’s but Luiselli’s decision to write a novel
past), seems especially true today: suffering? Pragmatic concern: at all surely affirms otherwise.

56 The New York Review

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March 21, 2019 57


Twilight of the Elites:
Prosperity, the Periphery,
and the Future of France
by Christophe Guilluy, translated from
the French by Malcolm DeBevoise.
Yale University Press, 177 pp., $25.00
Driving was already expensive in France
when in January 2018 the government of
President Emmanuel Macron imposed
a tax that raised the price of diesel fuel
by 7.6 centimes per liter and of gasoline
by 3.8 centimes (about 7 and 3 cents,
respectively); further increases were
planned for January 2019. The taxes
were an attempt to cut carbon emissions
and honor the president’s lofty promise
to “Make Our Planet Great Again.”
Priscillia Ludosky, then a thirty-
two-year- old bank employee from the
Seine- et-Marne department outside
Paris, had no choice but to drive into
the city for work every day, and the cost
of her commute was mounting. “When
you pay regularly for something, it
really adds up fast, and the increase
was enormous,” she told me recently.
“There are lots of things I don’t like.
But on that I pushed.” In late May 2018,
she created a petition on Change.org
entitled Pour une Baisse des Prix du
Carburant à la Pompe! (For a reduc-
tion of fuel prices at the pump!)
Over the summer Ludosky’s peti-
tion—which acknowledged the “entirely
honorable” aim of reducing pollution
while offering six alternative policy sug-
gestions, including subsidizing electric
cars and encouraging employers to
allow remote work—got little attention.
In the fall she tried again, convincing a
radio host in Seine- et-Marne to inter-
view her if the petition garnered 1,500
signatures. She posted that challenge
on her Facebook page, and the signa-
tures arrived in less than twenty-four
hours. A local news site then shared the
petition on its own Facebook page, and
it went viral, eventually being signed by
over 1.2 million people.
Éric Drouet, a thirty-three-year- old
truck driver and anti-Macron militant
also from Seine- et-Marne, created
a Facebook event for a nationwide
blockade of roads on November 17 to
protest the high fuel prices. Around
the same time, a fifty- one-year- old
self- employed hypnotherapist named
Jacline Mouraud recorded herself ad-
dressing Macron for four minutes and
thirty- eight seconds and posted the
video on Facebook. “You have perse-
cuted drivers since the day you took
office,” she said. “This will continue
for how long?” Mouraud’s invective
was viewed over six million times, and
the gilets jaunes—the yellow vests,
named for the high-visibility vests that
French drivers are required to keep in
their cars and to wear in case of emer-
gency—were born.
Even in a country where protest is a
cherished ritual of public life, the vio-
lence and vitriol of the gilets jaunes
movement have stunned the govern-
ment. Almost immediately it outgrew
the issue of the carbon taxes and the
financial burden on car-reliant French
people outside major cities. In a series
of Saturday demonstrations that began
in mid-November and have continued
58
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James McAuley
for three months, a previously dormant
anger has erupted. Demonstrators have
beaten police officers, thrown acid in
the faces of journalists, and threatened
the lives of government officials. There
has been violence on both sides, and the
European Parliament has condemned
French authorities for using “flash-
ball guns” against protesters, maiming
and even blinding more than a few in
the crowds. But the gilets jaunes have
a flair for cinematic destruction. In
late November they damaged parts of
the Arc de Triomphe in Paris; in early
January they commandeered a forklift
and rammed through the heavy doors
A yellow vest demonstration, Paris, December 2018
of the ministry of state—the only time
in the history of the Fifth Republic that
a sitting minister had to be evacuated
from a government building.
The gilets jaunes are more than a pro-
test. This is a modern-day jacquerie, an
emotional wildfire stoked in the prov-
inces and directed against Paris and,
most of all, the elite. French history
since 1789 can be seen as a sequence
of anti-elite movements, yet the gilets
jaunes have no real precedent. Unlike
the Paris Commune of 1871, this is a
proletarian struggle devoid of utopian
aspirations. Unlike the Poujadist move-
ment of the mid-1950s—a confederation
of shopkeepers likewise opposed to the
“Americanization” of a “thieving and
inhuman” state and similarly attracted
to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories—the
gilets jaunes include shopkeepers seem-
ingly content to destroy shop windows.
There is an aspect of carnival here: a
delight in the subversion of norms, a
deliberate embrace of the grotesque.
Many have said that the gilets jaunes
are merely another “populist move-
ment,” although the term is now so
broad that it is nearly meaningless.
Comparisons have been made to the
Britain of Brexit, the United States
of Donald Trump, and especially the
Italy of Cinque Stelle. But the crucial
difference is that the gilets jaunes are
apolitical, and militantly so. They have
no official platform, no leadership hier-
archy, and no reliable communications.
Everyone can speak for the movement,
and yet no one can. When a small fac-
tion within it fielded a list of candidates
for the upcoming European parliamen-
tary elections in May, their sharpest “The French social model is so in-
opposition came from within: to many tegrated that it almost seems a natu-
gilets jaunes, the ten who had put their ral, preexisting condition,” Alexis
names forward—among them a nurse, Spire, a sociologist of inequality at the
a truck driver, and an accountant— École des Hautes Études en Sciences
were traitors to the cause, having dared Sociales, told me recently. A number of
to replicate the elite that the rest of the the gilets jaunes I met said that despite
movement disdains. the taxes they pay, they do not feel they
Concessions from the government benefit from any social services, since
have had little effect. Under mount- they live far from urban centers. But
ing pressure, Macron was forced to anyone who has ever received housing
abandon the carbon tax planned for assistance, a free prescription, or six-
2019 in a solemn televised address in teen weeks of paid maternity leave has
mid-December. He also launched the benefited from the social protection
so- called grand débat, a three-month system. The effect of redistribution is
tour of rural France designed to give often invisible.
And yet the rich in France have gotten
Thomas Dworzak/Magnum Photos
much richer. Between 1983 and 2015, the
vast majority of incomes in France rose
by less than one percent per year, while
the richest one percent of the population
saw their incomes rise by 100 percent
after taxes. According to World Bank
statistics, the richest 20 percent now
earns nearly five times as much as the
bottom 20 percent. This represents a
stark shift from the Trente Glorieuses,
France’s thirty-year economic boom
after World War II. As the economist
Thomas Piketty has pointed out, be-
tween 1950 and 1983, most French in-
comes rose steadily by approximately
4 percent per year; the nation’s top in-
comes rose by only one percent.
What has become painfully visible,
however, is the extent of the country’s
geographical fractures. Paris has al-
ways been the undisputed center of
politics, culture, and commerce, but
France was once also a country that
cherished and protected its vibrant
provincial life. This was la France pro-
him a better grasp of the concerns of fonde, a clichéd but genuinely existing
ordinary people. In some of these ses- France of tranquil stone villages and
sions, Macron has endured more than local boulangeries with lines around
six hours of bitter criticisms from angry the block on Sundays. “Douce France,
provincial mayors. But these gestures cher pays de mon enfance,” goes the
have quelled neither the protests nor beloved song by the crooner Charles
the anger of those who remain in the Trenet. “Mon village, au clocher aux
movement. Performance is the point. maisons sages.” These days, the mai-
During the early “acts,” as the weekly sons sages are vacant, and the country
demonstrations are known, members boulangeries are closed.
refused to meet with French prime The story is familiar: the arrival of
minister Édouard Philippe, on the large multinational megastores on the
grounds that he would not allow the outskirts of provincial French towns
encounter to be televised, and that sen- and cities has threatened, and in many
timent has persisted. Perhaps the most cases asphyxiated, local businesses.1 In
telling thing about the gilets jaunes is the once-bustling centers of towns like
the vest they wear: a symbol of car own- Avignon, Agen, Calais, and Périgueux,
ership, but more fundamentally a mate- there is now an eerie quiet: windows
rial demand to be seen. are often boarded up, and fewer and
fewer people are to be found. This is
the world evoked with a melancholy
Inequality in France is less extreme beauty in Nicolas Mathieu’s novel
than in the United States and Britain, Leurs enfants après eux, which won the
but it is increasing. Among wealthy Prix Goncourt, France’s most presti-
Western countries, the postwar French gious literary prize, in 2018.
state—l’État-providence—is something The expansion since the 1980s of
of a marvel. France’s health and edu- France’s high-speed rail network has
cation systems remain almost entirely meant that the country’s major cities
free while ranking among the best
in the world. In 2017 the country’s
1
ratio of tax revenue to gross domestic This phenomenon has been widely
product was 46.2 percent, according discussed in France since the publica-
to statistics from the Organization for tion of the journalist Olivier Raze-
Economic Co- operation and Develop- mon’s Comment la France a tué ses
ment (OECD) —the highest redistribu- villes? (Rue de l’Échiquier, 2016). No
one has written more extensively on
tion level of any OECD country and a
this question in English than my fel-
ratio that allows the state to fight pov- low correspondent Adam Nossiter. See
erty through a generous social protec- especially his dispatch from Albi, “As
tion system. Of that 46.2 percent, the France’s Towns Wither, Fears of a De-
French government allocated approxi- cline in ‘Frenchness,’” The New York
mately 28 percent for social services. Times, February 28, 2017.
The New York Review
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AND  
Marlborough Graphics
40 West 57th Street, New York 10019; (212) 541-4900
graphics@marlboroughgallery.com
Monday-Saturday 10AM–6PM
R. B. Kitaj
Ezra Pound II, 1971
5 color screenprint,
photo screenprint
38 ½ x 29 ½”
Edition of 70
Other prints by R. B. Kitaj
available
A CUR RENT L IST IN G
Alexandre Gallery, 724 Fifth Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10019 Wildlife Art,
(212) 755-2828; inquiries@alexandregallery.com; westendantiques.com; michaelbankswildlifeart.com
www.alexandregallery.com Contact: mike@westendantiques.com.
Emily Nelligan: Hush
A Memorial Exhibition 20" x 16"
On view through April 13,
2019
Varujan Boghosian:
A Selection
On view through April 13,
2019

Varujan Boghosian, Robert Louis Stevenson,

2007, mixed media collage, 21 1/2" x 17 1/2"

Shepherd / W&K Galleries, 58 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075

Swann Auction Galleries, 104 East 25th Street, New York, NY 10010 John Davis Gallery, 362 1/2 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534
(212) 861-4050; ShepherdNY@aol.com; www.Shepherdgallery.com
(212) 254-4710; swanngalleries.com (518) 828-5907
THE SYMBOLIST VISION Upcoming Auction: African-American Fine Art, April 4. Preview open Laetitia Hussain
March 5 – April 20, 2019 March 30–April 3 March 30–April 21, 2019
Artists include: The sale is led by Norman Lewis's "Stones and trapezoids are
Block Island, oil on canvas, 1973- symbols of chance encoun-
Alastair 75, an impressive magenta and ters. They make tangible the
Burne-Jones gray example of the artist's 1970s abstract connection between
Fabry period inspired by his summers in nature and my own spiritual
Fidus the area. Contemporary art is well- world.
Fuchs represented by dynamic women Repeating the trapezoid’s
Khnopff who have pushed the boundar- shape, stones transform
Klinger ies of their media: a provocative, into bronze, evolving into a
Minne earthenware vessel from 2005 by complexity of sameness.
Norman Lewis, Block Island, oil on
Moreau Simone Leigh, one of Howardena In work as in life, I welcome
canvas, 1973-75. Estimate $200,000 to
Rops $300,000. Pindell's signature collage works what presents itself, adopt it
Solomon comprising of paper, threads and as a guide, learn its patterns
Still Life Love Life, 2019, giclee print
Zichy nails from 1980-81, and Faith Ringgold's Sleeping: Lover's Quilt #2, and rituals. The body of work
(1/10 edition) 7" x 7"
and others 1986. Additional highlights include works by stalwarts such as Charles becomes a measure of value
Sir Edward Burne-Jones
The Head of Saint Mary Magdalene White, Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff. arising from both chance and choice."– Laetitia Hussain
1886

Paula Cooper Gallery, Perlmutter Gallery, 60 Garner Road, Averill Park, NY

524 W 26th Street, New York Tel. :(518) 674-8711; Website: perlmuttergallery.com
(212) 255-1105; Email: info@perlmuttergallery.com
www.paulacoopergallery.com
Sarah Charlesworth
February 23–March 23
524 W 26th Street
Matias Faldbakken Guillaume Chansarel
February 21–March 30 book signing of
521 W 21st Street Drawing Avenue at

192 Books, Hugo Galerie

192 Tenth Avenue, New York 472 W Broadway,
(212) 255-4022; New York, NY 10012
www.192books.com www.hugogalerie.com
Sarah Charlesworth, Rider,
Robyn Creswell/Lawrence Joseph, 1983-1984. 14 March 2019, 6–8PM RSVP to: info@hugogalerie.com
"City of Beginnings" Sunday, March 10, 7PM
Frederic Tuten/Steve Martin, HUGO GALERIE is pleased to host an evening with Guillaume Chansarel
"My Young Life" Monday, March 11, 7PM to celebrate the publication of his artistic pilgrimage along Manhattan’s
Karen Emmerich/Christos Ikonomou, Broadway, Drawing Avenue.
Sunday Afternoon by Jenness Cortez • Acrylic on panel, 24” x 30”
"Good Will Come From the Sea" Tuesday, March 19th, 7PM Having studied architecture and scenography, Chansarel uses the
Open by appointment only.
urban framework as a central element in his artistic practice. He is
interested in architecture, but also in its graphical representation, the
constructions of perspective, and how perspective can deepen an
architectural subject.



His aesthetic tome includes an introduction by famous french writer,
Frédéric Beigbeder and 247 drawings by Chansarel, one for each of

AND
Broadway’s corners—from up under the Broadway Bridge all the way
down to the Staten Island Ferry.




The artist completed this illustrated catalog in just seven days and
describes it as “a true declaration of love to New York.” City residents
and visitors alike will delight in the familiar and fresh vignettes of our
beloved Gotham.
A c ol l e ct i o n o f n o tab l e ar t an d Each Drawing Avenue book purchased will be accompanied by one of
exhi bi t i o n s f r om ar o u n d th e w o r l d . the 247 original gouache paintings.
Please join us on the 14th of March, 2019, from 6 to 8PM, to welcome
Chansarel back to where it all began and toast the full circle of his proj-
ect. RSVP and direct inquiries to: info@hugogalerie.com.

I f y ou w o ul d l ik e t o k n ow mo re ab o u t th e l i s ti n g , p l ea s e HUGO GALERIE is a Fine Arts gallery located in SoHo, New York

c on t ac t gallery@nybooks.com or (212) 293-1630. specializing in contemporary figurative painting and sculpture. The
gallery represents an international roster of artists working in a variety
of media and range of genres.

March 21, 2019 59


are all well connected to Paris. But
there are many small towns where the
future never arrived, where abandoned
nineteenth- century train stations are
now merely places for teenagers to
make out, monuments of the way things
used to be. In these towns, cars are the
only way people can get to work. I met a
fifty-five-year-old truck and taxi driver
named Marco Pavan in the Franche-
Comté in late November. What he told
me then—about how carbon taxes can
seem like sneers from the Parisian
elite—has stayed with me. “Ask a Pa-
risian—for him none of this is an issue,
because he doesn’t need a car,” Pavan
said. “There’s no bus or train to take
us anywhere. We have to have a car.”
I cited that remark in a Washington
Post story I filed from Besançon; in
the online comments section, many at-
tacked the movement for what they saw
as a backward anti-environmentalism—
missing his point.
Few have written as extensively as the
French geographer Christophe Guilluy
on la France périphérique, a term he
popularized that refers both to the peo-
ple and the regions left behind by an
increasingly globalized economy. Since
2010, when he published Fractures
françaises, Guilluy has been investigat-
ing the myths and realities of what he
calls “the trompe l’oeil of a peaceful,
moderate, and consensual society.” He
is one of a number of left-wing French
intellectuals—among them the novel-
ist Michel Houellebecq, the historian
Georges Bensoussan, and the essayist
Michel Onfray—who in recent years
have argued that their beloved patrie
has drifted into inexorable decline,
a classic critique of the French right
since 1789. But Guilluy’s decline narra-
tive is different: he is not as concerned
as the others with Islamist extremism
or “decadence” broadly conceived. For
him, France’s decline is structural, the
result of having become a place where
“the social question disappears.”
Guilluy, born in Montreuil in 1964,
is something of a rarity among well-
known French intellectuals: he is a
product of the Paris suburbs, not of
France’s storied grandes écoles. And it
is clear that much of his critique is per-
sonal. As a child, Guilluy, whose fam-
ily then lived in the working- class Paris
neighborhood of Belleville, was forc-
ibly relocated for a brief period to the
heavily immigrant suburb of La Cor-
neuve when their building was slated
to be demolished in the midst of Paris’s
urban transformation. “I saw gentri-
fication firsthand,” he told Le Figaro
in 2017. “For the natives—the natives
being just as much the white worker as
the young immigrant—what provoked
the most problems was not the arrival
of Magrebis, but that of the bobos.”
This has long been Guilluy’s battle
cry, and he has focused his intellectual
energy on attacking what he sees as the
hypocrisy of the bobos, or bourgeois bo-
hemians. His public debut was a short
2001 column in Libération applying that
term, coined by the columnist David
Brooks, to French social life. What was
happening in major urban centers across
the country, he wrote then, was a “ghet-
toization by the top of society” that ex-
cluded people like his own family.
Guilluy crystallized that argument
in a 2014 book that won him the ear
of the Élysée Palace and regular ap-
pearances on French radio. This was
60
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La France périphérique: comment on a
sacrifié les classes populaires, in which
he contended that since the mid-1980s,
France’s working classes have been
pushed out of the major cities to rural
communities—a situation that was a
ticking time bomb—partly as a result
of rising prices. He advanced that view
further in 2016 with La Crépuscule de
la France d’en haut—now translated
into English as Twilight of the Elites:
Prosperity, the Periphery, and the Fu-
ture of France—a pithy screed against
France’s bobo elite and what he sees as
its shameless embrace of a “neoliberal,”
“Americanized society” and a hollow,
feel-good creed of multicultural toler-
ance. In 2018, one month before the
rise of the gilets jaunes, he published
No Society, whose title comes from
French president Emmanuel Macron meeting with young people as part of
the ‘great debate’ he launched in response to yellow vest protests,
Étang-sur-Arroux, France, February 2019
Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 comment
that “there is no such thing as society.”
In Guilluy’s view, an immigrant
working class has taken the place of
the “native” working class in the ban-
lieues on the outskirts of major cities.
This native class, he argues, has been
scattered throughout the country and
become an “unnoticed presence” that
France’s elite has “made to disappear
from public consciousness” in order to
consolidate its grip on power. Cities are
now the exclusive preserve of the elites
and their servants, and what Guilluy
means by “no society” is that the vis-
ible signs of class conflict in urban daily
life have vanished. This is his trompe
l’oeil: rich, insulated Parisians have
convinced themselves that everything
is fine, while those who might say oth-
erwise are nowhere near. “The sim-
mering discontent of rural France has
never really been taken seriously,” he
writes in Twilight of the Elites.
Since November, much of the French
press has declared that Guilluy essen-
tially predicted the rise of the gilets
jaunes. They seem, after all, a fulfill-
ment of his prophecy about “the be-
trayal of the people” by the elites, even
if he is always elusive about who ex-
actly “the people” are. While critiques
from the movement have remained a
confused cloud of social media invec-
tive, Guilluy has served as its de facto
interpreter.
No Society puts into words what
many in the gilets jaunes have either
struggled or refused to articulate. This
is the hazy middle ground between
warning and threat: “The populist
wave coursing through the western
world is only the visible part of a soft ployed gardener that he could find a new
power emanating from the working job if he merely “crossed the street.”
classes that will force the elites to re- Yet nothing quite compares to the
join the real movement of society or statement Macron made in inaugurat-
else to disappear.” ing Station F, a startup incubator in
For now, however, there is just one the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris,
member of the elite whom the gilets housed in a converted rail depot. It is
jaunes wish would disappear, and calls a cavernous consulate for Silicon Val-
for his violent overthrow continue ley, a soaring glass campus open to all
even as the movement’s momentum those with “big ideas” who can also pay
subsides. €195 a month for a desk and can fill out
an application in fluent English. (“We
won’t consider any other language,” the
An intense and deeply personal ha- organization’s website says.) Google,
tred of Macron is the only unifying Amazon, and Microsoft all have offices
cry among the gilets jaunes. Eighteen in it, and in a city of terrible coffee,
months before the uprising began, this the espresso is predictably fabulous. In
was the man who captured the world’s June 2017 Macron delivered a speech
imagination and who, after populist there. “A train station,” he said, refer-
victories in Britain and the United ring to the structure’s origins, “it’s a
place where we encounter those who are
Ludovic Marin/AFP /Getty Images
succeeding and those who are nothing.”
This was the moment when a large
percentage of the French public learned
that in the eyes of their president, they
had no value. “Ceux qui ne sont rien” is
a phrase that has lingered and festered.
To don the yellow vest is thus to declare
not only that one has value but also that
one exists.
O n the whole, the gilets jaunes are
not the poorest members of French
society, which is not surprising. As
Tocqueville remarked, revolutions
are fueled not by those who suffer the
most, but by those whose economic sta-
tus has been improving and who then
experience a sudden and unexpected
fall. So it seems with the gilets jaunes:
most live above the poverty line but
come from the precarious ranks of the
lower middle class, a group that aspires
to middle- class stability and seeks to
secure it through palliative consump-
States, had promised a French “Third tion: certain clothing brands, the latest
Way.” Yet the Macronian romance is iPhone, the newest television.
already over, both at home and abroad. In mid-December Le Monde profiled
To some extent, the French always a young couple in the movement from
turn against their presidents, but the Sens in north- central France, identi-
anger Macron elicits is unique. This is fied only as Arnaud and Jessica. Both
less because of any particular policy twenty-six, they and their four children
than because of his demeanor and, live in a housing project on the €2,700
most of all, his language. “Mr. Macron per month that Arnaud earns as a truck
always refused to respond to us,” Mu- driver, including more than €1,000 in
riel Gautherin, fifty-three, a podiatrist government assistance. According to
who lives in the Paris suburbs, told me statistics from France’s Institut na-
at a December march on the Champs- tional de la statistique et des études
Élysées. “It’s he who insults us, and he économiques (Insée), this income
who should respond.” When I asked places them right at the poverty line for
her what she found most distasteful a family of this size, and possibly even
about the French president, her answer slightly below it. But the expenses Ar-
was simple: “His words.” naud and Jessica told Le Monde they
She has a point. Among Macron’s struggled to pay included karate les-
earliest actions as president was to sons for their oldest son and pet sup-
shave five euros off the monthly sti- plies for their dog. Jessica, who does
pends of France’s Aide personalisée au not work, told Le Monde, “Children
logement (APL), the country’s housing are so mean to each other if they wear
assistance program. Around the same lesser brands. I don’t want their friends
time, he slashed France’s wealth tax to make fun of them.” She said she had
on those with a net worth of at least traveled to Paris for gilet jaune protests
€1.3 million— a holdover from the Mit- on three separate weekends—journeys
terand era. that presumably cost her money.
Macron came to office with a record Readers of Le Monde—many of them
of unrelentingly insulting the poor. In educated, affluent, and pro-Macron—
2014, when he was France’s economic were quick to attack Arnaud and Jes-
minister, he responded to the firing of sica. But the sniping missed their point,
nine hundred employees (most of them which was that they felt a seemingly in-
women) from a Breton slaughterhouse escapable sense of humiliation, fearing
by noting that some were “mostly illit- ridicule everywhere from the Élysée
erate.” In 2016 he was caught on camera Palace to their children’s school. They
in a heated dispute with a labor activ- were explaining something profound
ist in the Hérault. When the activist about the gilets jaunes: the degree to
gestured to Macron’s €1,600 suit as which the movement is fueled by unful-
a symbol of his privilege, the minister filled expectations. For many demonstra-
said, “The best way to afford a suit is to tors, life is simply not as they believed it
work.” In 2018 he told a young, unem- would be, or as they feel they deserve.
The New York Review

There is an aspect of entitlement to the
gilets jaunes, who are also protesting
what the French call déclassement, the
increasing elusiveness of the middle-
class dream in a society in which eco-
nomic growth has not kept pace with
population increase. This entitlement
appears to have alienated the gilets
jaunes from immigrants and people of
color, who are largely absent from their
ranks and whose condition is often ma-
terially worse.2 “It’s not people who
don’t have hope anymore, who don’t
have a place to live, or who don’t have
a job,” Rokhaya Diallo, a French activ-
ist for racial equality, told me recently,
describing the movement. “It’s just that
status they’re trying to preserve.”
The gilets jaunes have no substantive
ideas: resentment does not an ideol-
ogy make. They remain a combustible
vacuum, and extremist agitators on the
far right and the far left have sought to
capitalize on their anger. Both Marine
Le Pen of the recently renamed Ras-
semblement National and Jean-Luc
Mélenchon of the left-wing La France
Insoumise have tried hard to channel
the movement’s grassroots energy into
their own political parties, but the gi-
lets jaunes have so far resisted these
entreaties. The gilets jaunes also found
themselves at the center of a diplomatic
spat: in early February Italy’s deputy
prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, met
with two of their members on the out-
skirts of Paris in a jab at Macron. Two
days later, France withdrew its ambas-
sador to Rome for the first time since
1940, but the gilets jaunes have not
attempted to exploit this attention for
their own political gain. Instead there
was infighting—a Twitter war over who
had the right to represent the cause
abroad and who did not.
The intellectual void at the heart of
an amorphous movement can easily
fill with the hatred of an “other.” That
may already be happening to the gilets
jaunes. Although a careful analysis by
Le Monde concluded that race and im-
migration were not major concerns in
the two hundred most frequently shared
messages on gilet jaune Facebook
pages between the beginning of the
movement and January 22, a number
of gilets jaunes have been recorded on
camera making anti- Semitic gestures,
insulting a Holocaust survivor on the
Paris metro, and saying that journal-
ists “work for the Jews.” Importantly,
the gilets jaunes have never collectively
denounced any of these anti- Semitic
incidents—a silence perhaps inevitable
for a movement that eschews organiza-
tion of any kind. Likewise, a thorough
study conducted by the Paris-based
Fondation Jean Jaurès has shown the
extent to which conspiracy theories are
popular in the movement: 59 percent of
those surveyed who had participated in
a gilet jaune demonstration said they be-
lieved that France’s political elites were
encouraging immigration in order to re-
2
According to the annual 2018 report
on poverty from Secours Catholique, a
leading French charity, of the 8.8 mil-
lion people living below the poverty
line in France, the groups most affected
were undocumented immigrants, sin-
gle mothers, and elderly women. See
“État de la pauvrété en France,” www
.secours-catholique.org/sites/scinternet/
files/publications/rs18-bd.pdf.
March 21, 2019
РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
place them, and 50 percent said they be- the gilets jaunes have resulted in a per-
lieved in a global “Zionist” conspiracy. sonal apology from the president and a
Members of the movement are often slew of concessions.
quick to point out that the gilets jaunes
are not motivated by identity politics,
and yet anyone who has visited one Guilluy, whose analysis of la France
of their demonstrations is confronted périphérique ultimately fails to grapple
with an undeniable reality. Far too significantly with France’s decidedly
much attention has been paid to the peripheral overseas territories, does
symbolism of the yellow vests and far not shy away from the question of iden-
too little to the fact that the vast major- tity. He sees a racial element to the frus-
ity of those who wear them are lower- trations of la France périphérique, but
middle- class whites. In what is perhaps he does not see this as a problem. Some
the most ethnically diverse society in of the most frustrating moments in his
Western Europe, can the gilets jaunes work come when he acknowledges but
truly be said to represent “the people,” refuses to interrogate white working-
as the members of the movement often class behavior that seems to be racially
claim? Priscillia Ludosky, arguably the motivated. “Public housing in outlying
first gilet jaune, is a black woman. “It’s communities is now a last resort for
complicated, that question,” she told workers hoping to be able to go on living
near the major cities,” he writes in Twi-
Stephane Grangier/Corbis/Getty Images
light of the Elites, describing the recent
astronomic rise in France’s urban real
estate prices. “These projects, mostly
occupied by immigrant renters, are
avoided by white French-born workers.
Barring some utterly unforeseeable turn
of events, their expulsion from the larg-
est urban centers will be irreversible.”
It would not diminish Guilluy’s broader
point about la France périphérique if he
acknowledged that victims of structural
changes can also be intolerant.
Guilluy also regularly recycles anxi-
eties over immigration, often from
controversial theorists such as Michèle
Tribalat, who is associated with the idea
of le grand remplacement, the alleged
“great replacement” of France’s white
population by immigrants from North
Christophe Guilluy, Paris, 2015
and Sub- Saharan Africa. In making
his case about “the demographic revo-
me. “I have no response.” lution in process,” Guilluy has been ac-
The gilets jaunes are also distinctly cused of inflating his statistics. France,
a minority of the French population: he wrote in Fractures françaises, “wel-
in a country of 67 million, as many as comes a little less than 200,000 legal
282,000 have demonstrated on a single foreigners every year.” But these claims
day, and that figure has consistently were attacked by Patrick Weil, a lead-
fallen with each passing week, down ing French historian of immigration,
to 41,500 during “Act 14” of the pro- who noted in his book Le sens de la Ré-
test on February 16. On two different publique (2015) that Guilluy failed to
weekends in November and December, consider that a large number of those
other marches in Paris—one for wom- 200,000 are temporary workers, stu-
en’s rights, the other against climate dents who come and go, and others of
change—drew far bigger crowds than “irregular” status. Guilluy has not re-
the gilets jaunes did. But the concerns sponded to these criticisms, and in any
of this minority are treated as universal case his rhetoric has since grown more
by politicians, the press, and even the radical. In No Society he writes, “Mul-
movement’s sharpest critics. Especially ticulturalism is, intrinsically, a feeble
after Trump and Brexit, lower-middle- ideology that divides and weakens.”
class and working- class whites com- Whether the gilets jaunes will even-
mand public attention even when they tually come to agree with him is a cru-
have no clear message. cial question. Like Guilluy, they are
French citizens of color have been responding to real social conditions.
protesting social inequality for years But if, following Guilluy’s lead, they ul-
without receiving any such respect. In timately resort to the language of race
2005 the killing of two minority youths and ethnicity to explain their suffer-
by French police in the Paris suburb of ing, they will have chosen to become a
Clichy-sous-Bois ignited a string of vi- different movement altogether, one in
olent uprisings against police brutality, which addressing inequality was never
but the government declared an official quite the point. In some ways, they
state of emergency instead of launch- have already crossed that line.
ing a grand débat. In 2009, the over-
seas departments of Guadeloupe and
Martinique saw a huge strike against On the afternoon of Saturday, Febru-
the high cost of living—a forty-four- ary 16, the prominent French intellec-
day uprising that also targeted fuel tual Alain Finkielkraut got out of a taxi
prices and demanded an increase to on the Boulevard Montparnasse. A
the minimum wage. In 2017 an almost crowd of gilets jaunes noticed him and
identical protest occurred in Guyana, began hurling anti- Semitic insults. The
another French overseas department, scene, recorded on video, was chilling:
where residents demonstrated against in the center of Paris, under a cloudless
household goods that were as much as sky, a mob of visibly angry men sur-
12 percent more expensive than they rounded a man they knew to be Jewish,
were in mainland France, despite a called him a “dirty Zionist,” and told
lower minimum wage. The French gov- him, “go back to Tel Aviv.”
ernment was slow to respond in both of Finkielkraut’s parents were Polish
these instances, while the concerns of refugees from the Holocaust. He was
born in Paris in 1949 and has become
a fixture in French cultural life, a pro-
lific author, a host of a popular weekly
broadcast on France Culture, and a
member of the Académie Française,
the country’s most elite literary insti-
tution. In the words of Macron, who
immediately responded to the attack,
he “is not only an eminent man of let-
ters but the symbol of what the Re-
public affords us all.” The irony is that
Finkielkraut—another former leftist
who believes that France has plunged
into inexorable decline and ignored the
dangers of multiculturalism—was one
of the only Parisian intellectuals who
had supported the gilets jaunes from
the beginning.
I spoke to Finkielkraut after the at-
tack, and he explained that the gilets
jaunes had seemed to him the evidence
of something authentic. “I saw an invis-
ible France, neglected and forgotten,”
he said. “Wearing fluorescent yellow
vests in order to be visible—of being
a ‘somewhere’ as opposed to an ‘any-
where,’ as Goodhart has said—seemed
to me an absolutely legitimate critique.”
The British journalist David Goodhart,
popular these days in French right-wing
circles, is the author of The Road to
Somewhere (2017), which sees populist
anger as the inevitable response to the
widening gulf between those “rooted”
in a particular place and cosmopoli-
tans at home anywhere. “France is not
a ‘start-up nation,’” Finkielkraut told
me. “It can’t be reduced to that.”
Finkielkraut said that the attack was
a sign that the reasonable critiques
orginally made by the gilets jaunes had
vanished, and that they had no real fu-
ture. “I think the movement is in the
process of degradation. It’s no longer
a social movement but a sect that has
closed in on itself, whose discourse is
no longer rational.”
Although the Paris prosecutor has
opened an investigation into his at-
tackers, Finkielkraut has not pressed
charges. He told me that the episode,
as violent as it was, did not necessar-
ily suggest that all those who had worn
yellow vests in recent months were
anti-Semites or extremists. “Those who
insulted me were not the nurses, the
shopkeepers, or the small business own-
ers,” he said, noting that he doubted he
would have experienced the same prej-
udice at the roundabouts, the traffic
circles across the country where gilets
jaunes protesters gathered every Satur-
day. In a sense, these were the essence
of the movement, which was an incho-
ate mobilization against many things,
but perhaps none so much as loneli-
ness. The roundabouts quickly be-
came impromptu piazzas and a means,
however small, of reclaiming a spirit of
community that disappeared long ago
in so many French towns and villages.
In Paris, where the remaining gilets
jaunes have now focused most of their
energy, the weekly protests have be-
come little more than a despicable the-
ater filled with scenes like the attack
on Finkielkraut. There is no convinc-
ing evidence that those still wearing
yellow vests are troubled by the pres-
ence of bigotry in their ranks. What is
more, many gilets jaunes now seem to
believe that pointing out such preju-
dice is somehow to become part of a
government-backed conspiracy to turn
public opinion against them.
Consider, for instance, a February 19
communiqué released in response to the
attack on Finkielkraut from La France
61
 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

en Colère, one of the movement’s main
online bulletins. “For many days, the
government and its friends in the na-
tional media seem to have found a new
technique for destabilizing public opin-
ion and discrediting the Gilets Jaunes
movement,” it begins. “We denounce the
accusations and the manipulations put in
place by this government adept at fake
news.” But this is all the communiqué
denounces; it does not address the anti-
Semitic violence to which Finkielkraut
was subjected, nor does it apologize
to a national figure who had defended
the movement when few others of his
prominence dared to do the same.
A month after our last conversation,
I called Priscillia Ludosky back, to see
if she had any reaction to the recent
turn of events in the movement her pe-
tition had launched. She was only inter-
ested in discussing what she called the
French government’s “systematic abuse
to manipulate public opinion.” She also
believes that a government-media con-
spiracy will stop at nothing to smear
the cause. “If there was one person
who ever said something homophobic,
it was on the front page of every news-
paper,” she told me.
In the days after the attack,
Finkielkraut lamented not so much the
grim details of what had happened but
the squandered potential of a moment
that has increasingly descended into
paranoid feverishness. As he told me:
“This was a beautiful opportunity to
reflect on who we are that’s been com-
pletely ruined.”
—February 21, 2019

LETTERS misogyny. But why might some readers

AN OPEN LETTER TO JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER, THE MIND–BODY PROBLEM
PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION, AND
DONALD TUSK, PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL To the Editors:
I was quite horrified by Elaine Blair’s re-
In 2010 The Athens Review of Books (ARB), the Greek counterpart of The view of On Henry Miller: Or, How to Be an
New York Review of Books, published a letter from a reader that mentioned Anarchist by John Burnside [NYR, Febru-
the political past of Nikolaos Kotzias as a leading member of the Commu- ary 21]. It seems to get Henry Miller entirely
nist Party of Greece and characterized him as a fanatic Stalinist (“gauleiter wrong—as it if were just an update of the late
of Stalinism”) at that time. Mr. Kotzias (who in the 1970s and 1980s wrote Kate Millett’s misinterpretation of Miller in
books praising the totalitarian Erich Honecker regime in East Germany and Sexual Politics. Of course she makes no ref-
Wojciech Jaruzelski’s dictatorship in Poland, and went on to serve as foreign erence to The Colossus of Maroussi, one of
minister of Greece from 2015 to 2018) then sued the ARB for defamation, Miller’s best books. Nor to To Paint Is to
demanding €250,000 in compensation. Love Again. She seems to have an animus
Court rulings in 2015 and 2017 considered the characterization “gauleiter against Miller, the sexist, completely forget-
of Stalinism” to be defamatory, ignoring the fact that it is a political value ting that he liberated the language for many
judgment about a public figure. There is evidence that the minister and the generations of writers—Philip Roth, Saul
government interfered in the course of justice in order to persecute the Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, myself—and
journal. One strong indication of this is the fact that in the Greek Supreme that he was a disappointed romantic who
Court, the court rapporteur initially called for the case against the ARB to be adored and was terrified of women, that he
dismissed for violating the case law of the European Court of Human Rights was “always looking for the secret of life,” a
as well as the Greek Constitution, but then voted against her own fully docu- searching philosopher, a student of the an-
mented report without explanation, only to be later appointed vice-president cient Greeks, and a brilliant watercolorist.
of the Supreme Court by the government. In fact, she sees Miller in such a narrowed,
Since July 2017, at the request of Mr. Kotzias the bank accounts of the clichéd manner that you would think she
publisher and of the chief editor of the ARB as well as the journal’s revenues had never read him. She seems to share the
from the Press Distribution Agency have been frozen by the courts, in an fear of sexuality that in fact he opposed. Of
obvious attempt to shut it down. The ARB is now at risk of being forced to course I knew Miller quite well and wrote a
suspend publication. book, The Devil at Large, about him and the
The ongoing persecution of the ARB is an extreme abuse of the ability that way he had become the clichéd model of a
Greek law affords to politicians to file lawsuits against the press and request misogynist. Actually, he was no such thing.
excessive sums of money. Because of the latitude provided by Greek law He was trying to expand the language of sex
they can win these lawsuits in violation of European Court of Human Rights in ways not so different from James Joyce.
case law, thus intimidating the press and deterring political criticism. He was trying to open up the territory of
In recent decades legal prosecution as absurd as the case of the former sex to modern writers. I know so many liter-
foreign minister against the ARB has not been encountered in the European ate, intelligent men who were thrilled by his
Union. Recently, three different MEPs’ questions to the European Commis- writing and not because of anything porno-
sion regarding the journal’s persecution have been tabled at the European graphic. It was as if he showed new ways to
Parliament, while the leader of the Greek opposition stated that “the perse- be honest about sexuality.
cution of the Athens Review of Books is a shame for the Hellenic Republic.” If you only read Tropic of Cancer and
On October 23, 2018, Mr. Kotzias publicly confessed: “I served in the Stalin- read it through the lens of Kate Millett, you
ist left.” Thus the statement that he had alleged to be defamatory in his law- will get him entirely wrong. Many writers in
suit and that the courts accepted as such in condemning the ARB was true. Paris in the 1930s took aim at our puritanical
Mr. President of the European Commission, Mr. President of the Euro- society and tried to open up ways of telling
pean Council, we ask you respectfully to use all means at the disposal of the the truth about men and women and lust.
Commission and the Council in order to save a journal that honors Greek We are not minds without bodies and our
letters and the Greek press. bodies often surprise us. You can’t throw
out an entire literature of the body by taking
a censorious approach to human behavior.
Kwame Anthony Appiah Mark Mazower He inspired so many writers who wanted
New York University Columbia University to understand how mind and body interact.
Harold Bloom Ian McEwan Surely he was not politically correct by to-
Yale University author day’s standards but he was a romantic and a
J. M. Coetzee Daniel Mendelsohn dreamer who had an immense impact on the
University of Adelaide Bard College literature we write today. To toss him away
Nobel laureate in literature, 2003 Jan-Werner Mueller as if he were a hater of women and nothing
Linda Colley Princeton University more is to allow puritanism to rob us of liter-
Princeton University Joyce Carol Oates ary openness. It is not fair to Miller’s legacy
Jeffrey Eugenides Princeton University nor is it fair to how twentieth and twenty-
New York University Steven Pinker first-century literature have evolved.
Samuel Freeman Harvard University
University of Pennsylvania Joan W. Scott Erica Jong
Anthony Gottlieb Institute for Advanced Study
New York City
All Souls College, Oxford Keith Thomas
Stephen Greenblatt All Souls College, Oxford Elaine Blair replies:
Harvard University Mario Vargas Llosa
Joseph Koerner Nobel laureate in literature, 2010 Though Ms. Jong’s letter doesn’t address
Harvard University Michael Walzer any particular points in my review, and
Mark Lilla Princeton University reads like a generic broadside that she
Columbia University and 232 others
keeps in a drawer for whenever someone,
David Luban somewhere writes about Miller’s depictions
Georgetown University Law Center of sex in a way not wholly laudatory, I’m
glad to have the opportunity to respond to
(A full list of signatories can be found at bit.ly/2T3hu1S) a few of these jabs. I too like Miller’s work,
and I don’t want to see him hustled off the
stage over broad, unexamined charges of
come away from his work with an impres-
sion of misogyny? What do such claims
even mean when we’re talking about works
of fiction? I think that reading Miller with
an eye to these questions is not at odds with
admiring his work, and if I have gotten him
wrong (which I would of course dispute), I
hope that my horrifying animus against him
will encourage still more discussion of his
writing and legacy.
But I don’t think it’s sufficient to say, as
Ms. Jong does, that Miller’s sexual frankness
was simply “telling the truth about men and
women and lust” and taking “aim at our pu-
ritanical society.” Yes, he does very much
seem to relish flipping off any notions of sex-
ual propriety or respectability, and this can
be thrilling and hilarious (to me, at least).
And as I mention in the piece, he can be ro-
mantic. But, for one thing, he gives no sign
of perceiving a crucial aspect of sexuality.
To put it simply: one person’s expressions
of sexual desire can impinge on another
person’s freedom. This impingement may
be accidental or it may be intentional; it
may be the very source of pleasure. This
was something that Miller couldn’t see, or,
more accurately, he didn’t recognize a po-
tential moral problem in it. I am not suggest-
ing here that he should be preaching to his
readers (and I am certainly not talking about
the morals of Miller as a private citizen). I
am noting that he doesn’t use the techniques
available to a novelist to show that he un-
derstands that in a number of his sex scenes
one character’s sexual pleasure may be
coming at the expense of another’s and that
this is an interesting, urgent, troubling, or
ambiguous situation between two people.
He is a searching philosopher in other re-
spects, but his philosophy of sex is shallow.
CORRECTIONS
In Ange Mlinko’s “Holding It Together”
[NYR, January 17], Jeffrey Yang’s An
Aquarium was described as his “last collec-
tion”; it was his first, and his second book is
Vanishing-Line, published in 2011.
In Ruth Margalit’s “The Girl Behind Lo-
lita” [NYR, February 7], the “self-sufficient
rapist” described in Lolita was not Clare
Quilty, but refers to one of the imaginary
teenaged boys that Humbert Humbert be-
lieves Dolores is bored by. This error was
misattributed to Robert Roper.
In David Salle’s “The Star of the Silken
Screen” [NYR, February 21], Andy Warhol
was incorrectly identified as a member of
the Greek Orthodox Church. His church
was Byzantine Catholic.
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