Last Week's New Yorker Review: November 18, 2024
Last Week’s New Yorker, week of November 18
“When the Nazis dreamed of a radio in every home or a newsreel before every film, they did not imagine Germans motionlessly staring at screens for most of the day, as we all do now.”
Must-Reads:
“American Fascist” (Dispatches) - Timothy Snyder’s America plays follow the Leader. It’s possibly self-justifying for my favorite of these Dispatches on Trump’s win to be the one that most closely matches the little tune I’m always playing about Trump, namely that we’ve seen all this before and it doesn’t take a historian to be able to guess what’s coming next. Snyder is an excellent writer, and I was nodding along throughout this; true, it merely confirmed things I’ve already felt and, often, said – but it’s not as though any of the other Dispatches said anything that really made me rethink my picture of the election – adjust my priors, so to speak. (Nathan Heller’s excellent online piece about information spread and its impact on the election, on the other hand, kinda did. Highly recommended – and Snyder and Heller’s pieces deepen one another, as Snyder shows the fundamental ideological underpinnings of the vibes-over-facts strategy, and points to why it maybe can’t work for Democrats – liberalism, not to mention leftism, may need other tools; there probably cannot be a lib Joe Rogan, let alone a lib Trump.) The ending could go further – Snyder names the “media and judiciary” as the main environments propping up Trump, but surely he could also point to a certain Paul von Hindenburg figure who chose to use his political power in cowardly and self-defeating ways. But this is punchy, stirring stuff, and a testament to the importance of words having meaning – they’re something to cling to in the horror and overwhelm of the next four years.
“Collision Course” – James Wood takes many sides with the debut novel from Devika Rege. The sharpest political commentary in this issue has no direct connection to Trump; it’s Wood discussing the “strange ideological fever” Rege depicts: “What might it mean, in a very large, very diverse, religiously excitable country, to dissolve oneself into ‘something complete and great’? …Something has been opened that cannot be closed – or that can be closed only after bloodletting and sacrifice.” Rege’s book jumps between characters in a “dialogical” close-third; this allows her to depict some of the brutal complexity of India and its politics. Wood writes an excellent appreciation, and it’s exciting to see him excited. (“Rege’s seriousness of purpose runs like an electrical wire through the book.”) He makes a hard task look deceptively simple – he captures this wildly multifarious book in a few elegant gestures.
Window-Shop:
“The Back Came for Us” (Dispatches) - Lorrie Moore’s America is not healthy for children and other living things. Moore absolutely nails the Dispatches assignment, which is not actually to write a very short article but simply to do a blog. She’s voicey, she’s jaded in a way that shows her actual compassion (hope at a time like this leaves me queasy, comfort leaves me cold), and she’s unafraid to say random shit – Kamala would’ve done better if she looked like, for some reason, Christine Lagarde – which is what good blogging is all about. It’s sort of all over the place, but so is the populace!
“Womanhood, as Defined by Man” (Dispatches) - Jia Tolentino’s America has ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Makes an awful lot out of a small handful of exit polls, which is a risky proposition; these things often unravel in the wash. But obviously Tolentino can write toward an argument like few others; her point about “volition” as the difference between the right and left is spot on (and negates the arguments of a few other writers in the feature) and her point about the reality of gender politics encompassing mostly the politics of tiny groups, especially marriages, is astute as well. I’m iffy about the wisdom of these single-lens demographic takes, which ignore more than they express; still, Tolentino gets the specifics right.
“Dobbs Was Just the Beginning” (Dispatches) - Jane Mayer’s America is courting disaster. Maybe the most pessimistic of these Dispatches, and not coincidentally maybe the least subjective – Mayer just states what will probably happen with the court in the next four years, and it’s basically apocalyptic, to the tune of: Dobbs was just the beginning and Trump will have directly appointed the majority of the court by the time he’s done. Mary Ziegler’s interview gets the most substantive jab at Harris’ rhetoric in the whole magazine, and Mayer speaks of Trump’s court “breaking through old guardrails” – and lets Gloria Steinem speak of Hitler. Now’s the time.
“Bad Time” (Talk of the Town) - Jake Offenhartz gets all wound up. Just wonderful – there’s nothing like a metropolitanite that’s stubbornly grumpy about a longstanding minor problem. Dig those heels in! Deeper! Deeper!
“Yule Rules” - Richard Brody decks the halls with bouts of melancholy, fa la la la la. Of course Brody is head-over-heels for a mostly plotless humanistic memory film. I’m surprised that he’s surprised (“It wasn’t on my list of likely occurrences,” sez he), though I suppose the Christmasy trappings may have thrown him off. He never quite makes clear what the “strikingly original narrative form” actually is; the film he’s describing just seems to have a random procession of “micro-incidents.” There are worse things – and I’d rather have one film like this than 250 million Red Ones.
“Hemlines” (Dispatches) - Jill Lepore’s America is full of sisters doing it (electing a fascist) for themselves. I adore how disdainful Lepore is of the Democrats’ condescending secret voter campaign. And I like the anecdote about skirt hemming, which is tied in neatly to the broader thrust, but with enough poeticism not to seem obvious. Lepore seems reluctant to draw any conclusions, though; toward the end she just starts stating things one after another (“None of this is good for women or for children or for men.”) It’s absolutely worth taking the time to be angry at the Democrats for fucking up, again, and almost on purpose. But Lepore’s argument is a bit self-defeating – if women voted for President without considering reproductive rights, then what does it matter if the Democrats condescended to them on the issue of reproductive rights? I think Lepore could answer these questions with more space – of all the pieces, this is the one that most needs expanding. (I imagine an expansion would look something like Tolentino’s piece in the same issue, though, to be honest.) Lucky for us Lepore is a regular around here.
“Unchecked, Unbalanced” (Dispatches) - Jelani Cobb’s America is at zero dark thirty. I genuinely don’t know what the last line is supposed to mean and suspect it’s just supposed to sound cool. Otherwise this is a good summation of where we are; I’m not sure I’d put the entire onus of not convicting Trump on “Senate Republicans” but otherwise this points the finger where it needs to be pointed. Cobb’s stoic but clear-eyed style is always a comfort in trying times.
“Stuck On You” - Jackson Arn lets that ink in. Borderline incoherent opening section (every conference has free candy at the booths, what are you talking about?) and while things get better from there (the last line is the best line), Arn never quite nails down tattoos as an art form, maybe because he’s thinking about it in terms drawn from things he’s familiar with. I’ve been watching the latest season of Ink Master, decidedly a lesser juried-competition show but still quite fun, and the distinct stylistic lineages that most tattoos draw from – American Traditional, Japanese, New School, et al – are quite central to the practice as art, and crucial to understanding what tattooing is and means. But Arn is more interested in pain tolerances and peoplewatching; while he claims to see the form as artistically significant, he still treats it as a sort of sideshow.
“The Outliers” (Dispatches) - Jennifer Egan’s America has stickers on its windows. This is something a relative emails to the extended family – everyone, I canvassed for two days, and here’s what I learned about the election and our country! Which doesn’t mean Egan’s conclusions are entirely illegitimate, and at least she can write; the last two lines are great. The lack of expertise is less galling than when Thomas Friedman chats with his taxi driver; Egan’s not claiming to be an expert, after all. But maybe a little authority, a little gravitas, is necessary right now.
“Who We Have Been” (Dispatches) - Annette Gordon-Reed’s America has a hood in the closet. “What happened in Indiana”, that the Klan ran a fascist shadow government until their leader was brought down because he murdered a woman by biting her until she died of a staph infection, “could happen again, on a national scale”, says Gordon-Reed. That “could” is doing a lot of work – implying that there haven’t been fascist shadow governments of various stripes and sizes across the country in the meantime. But also, the bizarro way that particular man was brought down suggests that Gordon-Reed is hoping Trump will meet a similar demise – maybe he’ll, you know, stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody? The trouble is that the Klan staked everything on morality; Trump’s immorality is a main part of his appeal. The good news is that, according to The Onion, we might not have to worry about the Klan anymore.
Skip Without Guilt:
“New Chapter” - Louis Menand takes a novel approach. Deeply corny ending: Were you aware that people take TV shows seriously now?! What a concept! Otherwise, it’s a heavy load recapping a book which recaps thirty-some books of its own, and Menand doesn’t quite find a thesis despite a great deal of casting about. (Something about genre? Eh, not really – and the novel is more a form than a genre, anyway. Something about quantitative analysis? Nah.) If Menand doesn’t have anything that striking to say about Frank’s book, though, he can still quote from Frank; in some ways, this is a more traditional book review than is typical for the magazine, as though Frank’s project was so out-of-the-box Menand felt no need to push boundaries discussing it. Those quotes are excellent (D.H. Lawrence is “‘a sort of ventriloquist’s doll, perched on the century’s knee’”) and Frank’s book sounds fascinating. It would be nice if Menand bothered countering Frank’s assertion that “the novel ran out of currency thirty years ago” with more than a limp “I’m not sure that’s so.” Shrug not, lest ye be shrugged.
“Color Instinct” - Rebecca Mead goes neon and on with Jadé Fadojutimi. This is a depressing issue, as fits the mood, and I appreciated the bright jolt this piece brought. But I found it totally unconvincing regarding the quality of the work in question. I do adore living in the city, though: I dashed to Gagosian on Thursday eve and was able to see Fadojutimi’s work for myself. My main impression is that it’s profoundly indebted to Abstract Expressionism, especially mid-career de Kooning – essentially with vague nature substituted for vague urbanity – and it has virtually no relation to time or place at all, let alone to Fadojutimi’s personal life. Mead doesn’t strain too hard to connect Fadojutimi’s bipolar disorder to her art, thankfully, and the artist is quick to dispute even the idea of the paintings speaking, let alone them speaking to anything. I suppose this postmodern attitude situates her in the present, but paired with her gestural, seemingly emotive work, it makes her project feel a bit empty: What is all this labored messiness for, exactly? Her taste for finery does make me wonder if these paintings are meant to be essentially decorative, but they’re certainly art as Art, they’re the furthest thing from P&D. So one keeps circling back, unfortunately, to hotel art. These are, essentially, paintings which fantasize on a theme of nature; they can serve as floral arrangements and substitute windows. (Not to diss contemporary paintings of flowers, by any means.) There is a viscerality to Fadojutimi’s work that elevates it slightly above that purpose; little gobs of paint, barely visible in reproduction, reveal the maker’s hand. A few small, deliberately primitive drawings were also on display at Gagosian; the best of these showcase a compositional sense that’s unfortunately mostly missing in the paintings. Mead, however, is thoroughly won over – so thoroughly, in fact, that she implies some critics are simply so focused on the art’s (very high) “prices” that they don’t let themselves enjoy it. Apparently, Fadojutimi is part of the “ultra-contemporary”, a category that seems to be entirely generational and uninterested in any sort of critical appraisal – basically, it’s just part of a sales pitch, and one Mead shouldn’t be so quick to sell back to us. But there are some significantly more odious sales pitches being swallowed elsewhere in this issue. Mead can give Fadojutimi her flowers, and Fadojutimi can give them right back.
“Folding the Flag” (Dispatches) - Adam Gopnik’s America is utterly at odds. I’m not sure Gopnik knows what he’s saying with this extended Civil War metaphor, about a country where “the most minimally decent shared view, not just of what our country might be but of what it is, seems so impossible to arrive at”, and which therefore necessitates a great fight. Because he then starts calling for us to “rebuild a common life.” But what life, and where, and on whose grounds? Who is included, who is left out? Gopnik is more poetic and enigmatic and less smug and self-assured than George Saunders down below, but his argument has some of the same holes. It’s easy to clasp hands in brotherhood when your brother doesn’t already have a knife at your neck.
“Too Many Crooks” (Dispatches) - Rachel Maddow’s America is condemned to repeat itself. I’m not sure I can imagine a more obnoxious liberal response to a fascist being elected president than “that’s so insulting to the historians who said he was the worst president ever!” Ecch. The reminder that demagogues are always thieves is fine, though I wish Maddow would hazard a guess as to why that’s the case; right now, it sort of reads like she thinks “demagogue” is a race that she can do phrenology on. (My guess is simply that it takes a con artist to assert that they can make all your desires come true; most politicians hedge, trying to be the minimum viable candidate for the maximum number of people, which is precisely what the demagogue exploits.) But, yes, Trump is a scammer; that’s key to his whole deal, and it’s probably worth saying again and again.
Shut The Fuck Up:
“The Family Plan” - Emma Green asks where are those good old-fashioned values on which we used to rely? I hope this isn’t a signal of the magazine’s approach to the second Trump era. I don’t think it is, I think Green is just the in-house launderer of conservative think-tank ideas to match centrist-lib mores, a genre of writing also known as The Atlantic. “As a journalist,” Green says on X, “I am choosing to approach the coming political years with curiosity.” What she seems to mean by this is that she’s choosing to approach fascist goons with credulity. (When this guy is mocking you…) Apparently, the right’s new approach to the extreme unpopularity of their abortion ban will include a robust program of family policy. Green doesn’t give much in the way of, you know, policy detail; mostly, she just wants us to consider what if the right wing suddenly started passing lots of heavy-government-spending childcare bills? What would that say about things, if that were to suddenly happen?! Green doesn’t actually provide an answer to that question, either; she clearly wants the reader to decide it’s a good thing, though parental rights have a very well-documented dark side, and the right has long been using them as an excuse to enact various draconian policies. (I’ll continue saying it until conditions improve: Children are disenfranchised citizens, and fascism relies on scapegoating large groups of people who lack power.) None of this is new! Green parrots the playbook, using all the terminology without challenge or critical thinking; what it boils down to, though, is that giant QF or QF-ish families (because those always work out great) will be given big tax breaks, and this will be spun as heavily as possible. But for god’s sake, Emma, you shouldn’t be the one spinning. I do believe that this administration will prioritize, for example, getting rid of no-fault divorce over banning abortion, at least on day one. I fail to see how that’s anything other than horrifying. So shut the fuck up!
“On Whiteness” (Dispatches) - Kelefa Sanneh’s America has fascists of every color. It is insipid to say that because Trump did well with minorities, his actions and rhetoric concerning minorities suddenly do not matter. It is profoundly insipid to argue that this is a good thing, because, I guess, a white-supremacist fascist party with the support of only white people is worse than a white-supremacist fascist party supported by a diverse coalition. Even if you want to make the argument that Trump is merely profoundly xenophobic, I fail to see why a lot of low-information Hispanics and Black men gradually becoming profoundly xenophobic is in any way good for our country. So shut the fuck up!
“Concerning the Underlying Disease” (Dispatches) - George Saunders’ America just needs to watch baseball and smell the flowers. Not to get all 2019-core, but my god does this demonstrate an astonishingly privileged and blinkered understanding of what politics means and what its purpose is. (You don’t even understand the intersectional nature of the multiplicity of your offenses!) George, the reason the right and the left can’t get along isn’t because the information environment is toxic, although certainly it is; it’s because the right wants great portions of the left dead! Think about who is on the pothole council you propose in your knowingly homespun tone, and how they got put on that council, and think about the many citizens who are disenfranchised, for one reason or another or another. They aren’t gonna be on your pothole council, and smugly deciding it would be better if we “all” just got along misses the many people who are left out of that “all” – undocumented people, people with criminal records, the children who’ll have to live in the world our climate policy makes. Just to hammer the point home one more time, George: Those people can’t vote, and the fascists want them to die. So shut the fuck up!
Letters:
Kristina writes: “I thought Jennifer Wilson’s piece [on the Brothers Grimm] couldn’t quite do what you asked” – more deeply consider the influence of their tales on the spread of German nationalism – “in part because it is, although very subtly, another one of those ‘response to a book but not quite a book review’ pieces. (Did the New Yorker always do these, and I just not notice them? I always associated this type of … inspired-and-shaped by book in question pieces with the NYRB tbh.) As the book is a biography (and apparently the first in ages?) she sticks to their lives. Or at least that was my take… [but] I had to do a lot of work as a reader.”
Michael O. was reminded by my ambiguous little epigraph last week of a line by Mark Strand: “The end of the world is only the end of the world as you know it.” I tracked the poem down, and wouldn’t you know it, it was published in the magazine. And the context of the line makes it even better, I think. So here it is.
What did you think of this week’s issue?
om mani
padme hum
I am a fan of this "STFU" Sam :-)