Innholdsfortegnelse for Feb-09-15 i The New Yorker

The narrative arcs of nights spent drinking are sometimes self-imposed (pub crawl begins here, ends there), sometimes forced upon us (I woke up in Ronkonkoma!). At karaoke bars, the story’s in the soundtrack, but who’s doing the singing, of what, and how well—that’s up to fate. One evening in Chinatown, a young woman in a Nirvana T-shirt took a break from mixing Hawaiian punches—a juggling act involving eight kinds of liquor, pineapple juice, and grenadine—to pull out a giant laser disk, grab a mic, and perform “Santeria,” by Sublime. Then, sans segue, Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind” was warbled by a lady in a denim shirt as she gazed adoringly at her date. More people ducked into the dingy room and, with Tsingtao beers in hand, slid into red…

Not long ago, Heather Quinlan stood outside the Times Square Arts Center, on Forty-third Street, where she was preparing to interview Joe Franklin, the longtime New York talk-show host and self-proclaimed “King of Nostalgia,” who died last month, at eightyeight. Quinlan was making a documentary about the New York accent—“If These Knishes Could Talk”—for which she had interviewed, among others, Pete Hamill and a Korean man who sounds like Robert De Niro. To collect samples, she occasionally stood on street corners with a sign that said, “Do you have a New York accent? Then talk to me!” Fewer and fewer New Yorkers do, but in sixty years on radio and television Franklin had interviewed, by his estimate, more than three hundred thousand people, many of whom still had it. “I’m…

The story begins on a beautiful April morning when a man wakes exhausted and returns to sleep in his thirteen-yearold son’s trundle bed, declaring, “This is the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in!” Or it begins when the wife says goodbye to the man a few hours later, walking in front of his car switching her hips a bit, a kiss blown as she heads to her office and he continues on to his painting studio. Or it begins as he packs a tote bag with the usual slim thermos of strong coffee made in an Italian stovetop moka pot, a larger thermos of cold water, two tangerines, a package of Nat Sherman MCD cigarettes, and a plastic sack of raw almonds. The tote is astral blue and…

The possum knows how to play himself, is one of us. And the chameleon, too, can fit right in, be other than it is. I praise them both. And as night rises up from grass and comes down from the clouds, bats at top speed merely glance off of what they disturb. I admire their graceful swoops, and the brilliance of moles carving tunnels under lawns, feeling their whiskery way as they go. I even praise the cat, its savage patience and quick paws. And feel a camaraderie with the earthworm, straightforward but slippery, both ends open, getting under the feet of barefoot girls. Unlike you and me, they have no choice. They themselves are evidence of what can be done conspicuously, or under cover, without remorse. Whereas the animal…

My real name is Israel Beilin. My father Was a Roman slave who gained his freedom. I was first named Ralph Waldo Ellison but I changed it to the name of one of your cities Because I was born a Jew in Byelorussia. I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. My other name is Flaccus. I wrote an essay On the theme, You Choose Your Ancestors. It won’t be any feeble, conventional wings I’ll rise on—not I, born of poor parents. Look, even now the skin around my ankles Has been transformed and I am growing wings. Across the color line I summon Aurelius And Aristotle: threading through Philistine And Amalekite they come, quite graciously And without condescension. I took the name Irving or Caesar or Creole Jack. Some…

AMNESIA, by Peter Carey (Knopf). Nestled inside this brisk cyber caper is an aesthetically daring character study. The story is narrated initially by an embattled left-wing journalist who has been promised exclusive access to a young woman accused of hacking into Australia’s prison system and freeing inmates across the country. While the book begins as a thriller—the journalist maintains an uncertain alliance with a beautiful actress and contends with the historical consequences of American meddling in international affairs—it later shifts registers and perceptively recounts the formative years of the hacker. Carey imbues her immersion in the world of coding and the Internet with a palpable, engrossing sense of joy and discovery. AGAINST THE COUNTRY, by Ben Metcalf (Random House). Not so much a novel as a litany of complaints…

INVESTING IN HEALTH Luke Mogelson, in his article on the Ebola crisis in West Africa, writes that an earlier, “more robust and better-organized international response” could have contained the initial outbreak before it spread from remote rural areas to crowded cities (“When the Fever Breaks,” January 19th). A robust response is still urgently needed, not only to insure that the waning epidemic does not reignite but also to prevent future crises of this magnitude. As the article points out, every known outbreak of Ebola started in a remote locale. Greater long-term investment in agricultural and rural development— from seeds and fertilizer for small-scale farmers to credit and training for micro-entrepreneurs—could have raised the standard of living and health services in the communities where Ebola struck first. Mogelson’s reporting vividly…

“East Ville des Folies” It sometimes feels as though you can’t take two steps in this town without hearing about the latest speakeasy or being offered absinthe from a man dressed like Puck, which can beg the question: Had alcohol not been illegal for thirteen years, almost a century ago, how would we theme our parties? But the forbidden fruit is always tastier, especially when fermented. So brush up on the Charleston, and enjoy feigned lawlessness at Webster Hall, the former site of a speakeasy reportedly owned by Al Capone during Prohibition. For the third annual “East Ville des Folies,” all four floors of the music venue become a Prohibition-themed classroom for beer-and-whiskey education. But tastings are only part of the historical picture. Michael Arenella and his Dreamland Orchestra…

The architect Peter Pennoyer designs town houses, country houses, and beach houses for the rich and aesthetically conservative. His face is framed by a Tom Brokavian sweep of silver hair, and he favors loafers and spread-collar oxford shirts. Pennoyer’s friend Sigourney Weaver once wrote, “Like a summer’s day . . . his homes seem to have existed forever.” This is intentional. “As an architecture student at Columbia, I was quite taken with modernism,” Pennoyer said recently. “I did a loft once that was completely minimalist—no doors, white resin floor.” After a while, though, “those experiments came to seem arbitrary, and I returned to Greek and Roman forms, which is where I now draw much of my inspiration.” He is known for his scholarly attention to detail: knurled doorknobs, cabled fluting,…

On an April Monday in 2010, Patrick Mettes, a fifty-four-year-old television news director being treated for a cancer of the bile ducts, read an article on the front page of the Times that would change his death. His diagnosis had come three years earlier, shortly after his wife, Lisa, noticed that the whites of his eyes had turned yellow. By 2010, the cancer had spread to Patrick’s lungs and he was buckling under the weight of a debilitating chemotherapy regimen and the growing fear that he might not survive. The article, headlined “HALLUCINOGENS HAVE DOCTORS TUNING IN AGAIN,” mentioned clinical trials at several universities, including N.Y.U., in which psilocybin— the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms—was being administered to cancer patients in an effort to relieve their anxiety and “existential…

It’s not my fault. So you can’t blame me. I didn’t do it and have no idea how it happened. It didn’t take more than an hour after they pulled her out from between my legs for me to realize something was wrong. Really wrong. She was so black she scared me. Midnight black, Sudanese black. I’m light-skinned, with good hair, what we call high yellow, and so is Lula Ann’s father. Ain’t nobody in my family anywhere near that color. Tar is the closest I can think of, yet her hair don’t go with the skin. It’s different— straight but curly, like the hair on those naked tribes in Australia. You might think she’s a throwback, but a throwback to what? You should’ve seen my grandmother; she passed for…

FEBRUARY 2015 WEDNESDAY 4TH THURSDAY 5TH FRIDAY 6TH SATURDAY 7TH SUNDAY 8TH MONDAY 9TH TUESDAY 10TH ONSCREEN, IN SUCH WORKS as “Unfaithful” and “Cinema Verite,” Diane Lane has excelled at playing a dissatisfied wife whose polished glamour belies a stormy interior. Lane was born in Manhattan, but she hasn’t appeared on the New York stage since the seventies—now she stars in Bathsheba Doran’s “The Mystery of Love & Sex,” at the Mitzi E. Newhouse, a breeding ground for dystopian family dramas with enough wit and bite to please the discerning matinée crowd, and, sometimes, to transfer to Broadway. Lane and the seasoned stage actor Tony Shalhoub (above) play the parents of Charlotte (Gayle Rankin, memorable in “Cabaret” as a magnetically insouciant, androgynous chorus member), whose confusion about her sexual…

Several hours after the news broke, last Tuesday night, that Sheldon Silver would be relinquishing his post as the Speaker of the New York State Assembly, an e-mail arrived in these offices from someone calling himself Fake Sheldon Silver. “We’ve made a determination that it would be acceptable to meet with you at this time,” the note read. Its author proposed a meal at Zafis Luncheonette, on Grand Street, down the block from the real Silver’s apartment. Fake Sheldon Silver is a parodist, tweeting the ostensible musings (@ShellySilver) of the tight-lipped politician as a running critique of Albany obfuscation and graft. (Example: “Let’s begin the 237th Legislative Session by giving a warm welcome to our newest colleagues and a fond farewell to the molesters and felons.”) After five years of…

It’s no secret that the years since the Great Recession have been hard on American workers. Though unemployment has finally dipped below six per cent, real wages for most have barely budged since 2007. Indeed, the whole century so far has been tough: wages haven’t grown much since 2000. So it was big news when, last month, Aetna’s C.E.O., Mark Bertolini, announced that the company’s lowest-paid workers would get a substantial raise—from twelve to sixteen dollars an hour, in some cases—as well as improved medical coverage. Bertolini didn’t stop there. He said that it was not “fair” for employees of a Fortune 50 company to be struggling to make ends meet. He explicitly linked the decision to the broader debate about inequality, mentioning that he had given copies of Thomas…

In 2011, a young woman named Stephanie Shih was working in New York City at DoSomething.org, a nonprofit that helps young people start volunteer campaigns. Shih was responsible for sending out text messages to teen-agers across the country, alerting them to various altruistic opportunities and encouraging them to become involved in their local communities: running food drives, organizing support groups, getting their cafeterias to recycle more. Silly, prankish responses were not uncommon, but neither were messages of enthusiasm and thanks. Then, in August, after six months on the job, Shih received a message that left her close to tears for the rest of the day. “He won’t stop raping me,” it said. “He told me not to tell anyone.” A few hours later, another message came: “R u there?” Shih…

In April, 2009, Lin-Manuel Miranda, a writer, composer, and performer, received a call from the White House. The new President and the First Lady were planning to host an evening of live performances centered on “the American experience,” and Miranda was invited to participate. Miranda, who was twenty-nine, had spent the previous year starring in the Broadway musical “In the Heights,” of which he was the composer and lyricist. Set in Washington Heights, the show incorporated salsa and merengue with rap and hiphop, blending them with more conventional Broadway tropes, to winning effect. “Heights” had won four Tony awards, including those for Best Musical and Best Original Score, and Miranda had accepted the latter with an effervescent rap that invoked “Sunday in the Park with George”: “Mr. Sondheim / Look,…

It was just after eight o’clock on a November night when Robert Mc-Culloch, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, announced that a grand jury would not be returning an indictment in the police killing of Michael Brown, who was eighteen, unarmed, and African-American. About an hour later and eight hundred miles away, President Obama delivered a short and sober speech designed to function as an anti-inflammatory. He praised police officers while urging them to “show care and restraint” when confronting protesters. He said that “communities of color” had “real issues” with law enforcement, but reminded disappointed Missourians that Brown’s mother and father had asked for peace. “Michael Brown’s parents have lost more than anyone,” he said. “We should be honoring their wishes.” Even as he mentioned Brown’s parents, Obama…

There’s a lot that’s cheap about “Let the Right One In” (at St. Ann’s Warehouse), but it’s the cheap bits that generate much of the evening’s excitement. Based on the unputdownable 2004 book by the prolific Swedish short-story writer John Ajvide Lindqvist—it’s his first novel—the gothic tale centers on an adolescent loner named Oskar. The year is 1981, and Oskar lives with his mother in a utilitarian-looking flat in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm. (Oskar’s father, largely unknown and unknowable, lives in another part of the city.) In the book, Lindqvist describes the town swiftly: “It was not a place that developed organically, of course. Here everything was carefully planned from the outset. And people moved into what had been built for them. Earth-colored concrete buildings scattered about in the…