The New Yorker 2015 11 09, Czasopisma
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//-->PRICE $7.99NOV. 9, 2015N O V E M B E R 9, 2 0 1 5521GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWNTHE TALK OF THE TOWNGeorge Packer on refugees and the U.S.;remembering Lindsay; African art treasure;New York’s pencil king; songs and cookies.george Packer2635364252THE REPUBLICAN CLASS WARWill the G.O.P. finally address inequality?Alexis wilkinsonAlexis okeowoUNPLANNED PARENTHOODHANDEL IN KINSHASAThe rise of a self-taught orchestra.nick paumgartenLIFE IS RESCUESSaving people is a favorite Icelandic pastime.nathan hellerBLOOD TIESA college romance and a double-murder case.FICTION“HONEY BUNNY”jUlianne Pachico66THE CRITICSTHE CURRENT CINEMAanthony lane7477818284“Spotlight,” “Trumbo.”BOOKSalexandra schwartzMary Gaitskill’s “The Mare.”Briefly NotedPOP MUSICCarrie battanThe decline of dance music.THE ART WORLDpeter schjeldahlFrank Stella at the Whitney Museum.POEMScraig raineJIM JARMUSCH4870“Bitch”“Verdict with Guitar”COVERJohn Cuneo“Rolling Out the Gold Carpet”DRAWINGSMichael Maslin, Julian Rowe, Robert Mankoff, Frank Cotham, Bruce Eric Kaplan,Paul Noth, Carolita Johnson, Liana Finck, Drew Dernavich, Harry Bliss, Roz Chast, P. C. Vey,Edward Steed, Will McPhail, Matthew Diffee, Tom Chitty, Danny Shanahan, Farley KatzSPOTSM. H. JeevesCONTRIBUTORSgeorge packer(COMMENT, P. 21; “THE REPUBLICAN CLASS WAR,” P. 26)nathan heller(“BLOOD TIES,” P. 52)is a staff writer.is the author of “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the NewAmerica,” for which he won a National Book Award.nick paumgarten(THE TALK OF THE TOWN, P. 22; “LIFE IS RESCUES,”P. 42)has been writing for the magazine since 2000.alexis okeowo(“HANDEL IN KINSHASA,” P. 36)is a staff writer and agrew up in Colombia and nowlives in England. She recently finished a short-story collectionentitled “The Lucky Ones.”julianne pachico(FICTION, P. 66)jim jarmusch(POEM, P. 70)is a filmmaker, a writer, and a noise mu-fellow at the New America Foundation.mary norris(THE TALK OF THE TOWN, P. 24)started working atThesician. His next films, “Paterson” and “Gimme Danger,” will bereleased in 2016.is a staff writer andfilm critic for the magazine. “Nobody’s Perfect” is a collection of hisNew Yorkeressays.anthony lane(THE CURRENT CINEMA, P. 74)alexandra schwartz(BOOKS, P. 77)won the Nona Balakian Cita-New Yorkerin 1978. Her book, “Between You & Me: Confessions ofa Comma Queen,” was published in April.is an award-winningphotographer who, in addition to covering armed conflicts in theMiddle East for the past decade, has lately begun chronicling adven-ture around the world.benjamin lowy(PHOTOGRAPHS, PP. 42, 46)tion for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book CriticsCircle earlier this year.carrie battan(POP MUSIC, P. 82)has published fourbooks, including “The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory,” whichcame out in October.john seabrook(THE TALK OF THE TOWN, P. 25)is a writer living in Brooklyn.Her work has appeared in various publications, including theTimesMagazine, GQ,and the Web site Pitchfork.peter schjeldahl(THE ART WORLD, P. 84), the magazine’s art critic,is a recent Harvardgraduate and a former president of theHarvard Lampoon,and awriter for the HBO show “Veep.”alexis wilkinson(SHOUTS & MURMURS, P. 35)craig raine(POEM, P. 48), a poet, novelist, and critic, and the founderand editor ofAreté,has a new book, “My Grandmother’s Glass Eye:A Look at Poetry,” coming out early next year.was awarded the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing in 2008.His most recent book is “Let’s See.”JOHN cuneo(COVER)has received several prizes from the Society ofIllustrators, including the Hamilton King Award, for hisNew Yorkercover “Dog Meets Dog.” A collection of his personal drawingswill be published next year.NEWYORKER.COMEverything in the magazine, and morethan fifteen original stories a day.ALSO:DAILY COMMENT/CULTURAL COMMENT:Opinions and analysis bySLIDE SHOWS:Photographs from a tour of duty with members ofJoan Acocella, Jiayang Fan,and others.VIDEO:Photographers gather on Iceland’s Jökulsárlón lagoon,the Icelandic volunteer search-and-rescue team. Plus, art worksfrom the Frank Stella retrospective at the Whitney.PODCASTS:On Politics and More,John CassidyjoinsDorothyjockeying to capture the perfect picture of the treacherouslandscape. Plus, on the latest episode of “Comma Queen,”MaryNorrisdiscusses the difference between “I” and “me.”HUMOR:A Daily Cartoon on the news, byKaamran Hafeez.Wickendenfor a discussion about the most recent Republicandebate. On the monthly Fiction Podcast,Deborah TreismanandLydia Davistalk about a short story written by Davis’s father, RobertGorham Davis, which was published in the magazine in 1943.SUBSCRIBERS:Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies bylocation and device.)2THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 9, 2015THE MAILTHE FOREST FOR THE TREESKathryn Schulz writes about Henry DavidThoreau’s narcissism, priggishness, “dourasceticism,” and lack of fellow-feeling(“Pond Scum,” October 19th). Thosequalities were eloquently anatomizedby Perry Miller, in “Consciousness inConcord” (1958), and again, by RichardBridgman, in “Dark Thoreau”(1982).But in contrast to Schulz’s piece, whichexhibits the same lack of generosity thatshe ascribes to Thoreau, those booksthoroughly engage the complex ques-tion of why Thoreau’s passion for na-ture seemed to him to require the (im-possible) exclusion of the social world.Anyone who has read Thoreau withsympathy will flinch at the picture ofhim in Schulz’s piece. In response toThoreau’s journal entry dated April 11,1852—“It appears to be a law that youcannot have a deep sympathy with bothman and nature. Those qualities whichbring you near to the one estrange youfrom the other”—one might permit one-self to be repelled or, rather, to think,How extraordinary to be governed bysuch an economy. When Thoreau writes,“I desire to speak somewherewithoutbounds; like a man in a waking moment,to men in their waking moments,” it be-comes clear that we are not actually ex-cluded. What if Thoreau’s intention,as described in the journal entry fromAugust 17, 1851, to “watch nature alwayswith my moods!,” required deep solitude?Sharon CameronKenan Professor of English, EmeritaJohns Hopkins UniversityNew York CityMany readers interpret Thoreau’s famousmisanthropy less as his looking down onpeople than as his effort to elevate thenatural world. Instead of pursuing a nar-cissistic project, Thoreau might be seenas demonstrating the possibility of step-ping out of social ruts. He seeks to placelife in the context of history, natural sur-roundings, and the alternative modes ofother cultures. “Walden” makes no claimto consistency or universality. Its authoris alive to his personal contradictions.Where he fails, he exhorts us to try forourselves to look up from our daily livesand broaden our vision, and he does soin confident and muscular prose, richwith metaphor. Yes, he was sexist, but hewas also an abolitionist, a conservation-ist, and a pacifist who inspired Gandhi.By the way: the only scum floating onWalden Pond is the Walden Pond Scum,a group of kayakers learning Greenlandkayaking techniques; I’m a member. Wepay tribute to Thoreau’s curiosity aboutNative Americans, whom he approachedas respectfully as he did everyone on the“wrong side” of Route 2 from the citizensof Concord, whose closed-mindednesshe disdained.Sanjay GulatiHarvard, Mass.It’s often a mistake to name single truthswhen reading Thoreau. He once recalledthat the Hindus understood Kabir’s po-etry to have four senses (“illusion, spirit,intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of theVedas”), whereas in New England “it isconsidered a ground for complaint if aman’s writings admit of more than oneinterpretation.” One of the “senses” inThoreau that Schulz misses is the senseof humor. “Especially the transcenden-tal philosophy needs the leaven of humorto render it light and digestible,” he wrote.Schulz points to Thoreau’s refusal of adoormat for his cabin: “It is best to avoidthe beginnings of evil.” She comments,“I am not aware of any theology whichholds that the road to Hell is paved withdoormats.” I think he knew how to leavenidealism with a touch of exaggeration.Maybe nineteenth-century Yankee humoris too dry for the modern ear.Lewis HydeRichard L. Thomas Professor ofCreative Writing, Kenyon CollegeGambier, OhioSchulz’s critique misses a crucial pointabout Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Gov-ernment.” He argues that the fundamen-tal moral obligation of each person is tofollow his or her conscience. This is nota theory of government but a theory ofmoral obligation. Nor is it a claim of per-sonal infallibility; it is possible that a per-son who is following his conscience mayencounter someone with a conflictingbelief, and that one or both persons mayhave cause to rethink their position. Tho-reau might agree with Schulz that “it isthe point of democracy to adjudicate,”but only to a point. Majority rule doesnot adequately settle disputes over per-sonal moral obligation.Elizabeth A. LinehanAssociate Professor of PhilosophySaint Joseph’s UniversityPhiladelphia, Pa.A close, sensitive reading of Thoreau re-veals a complex man deeply connectedto family and community. He was an ec-centric, to be sure, but also a passionateman of genius. One of the lesser-knownrealities of Thoreau’s life was his warmrelationship with the children of Con-cord. Edward Emerson, the son of RalphWaldo, became concerned by the mis-conceptions that surrounded his friend—the kind that Schulz perpetuates. Ed-ward, writing in 1917, recalled Thoreauas “the best kind of an older brother,”adding that he was troubled “by the falseimpressions given by accredited writerswho really knew him hardly at all.” Hedescribes the “humble persons whom theliterary men would never find out, likethose who helped in the pencil mill, orin a survey, or families whom he cameto know well and value in his walkingover every square rod of Concord, orone of the brave and humane managersof the Underground Railroad, of whichThoreau was an operative.” He also writesthat “Thoreau, though brusque on oc-casions, was refined, courteous, kind andhumane; that he had a religion and livedup to it.” Schulz’s “gotcha” criticism can-not erode the lasting value of contextualreading.Lucille StottBrunswick, Me.CORRECTION: The subhead of “TheMemory Keeper” (October 26th) iden-tified Svetlana Alexievich, the NobelLaureate in Literature, as Russian. Shewrites in Russian, but she is Belarusian.•Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,address, and daytime phone number via e-mailto themail@newyorker.com. Letters may beedited for length and clarity, and may be pub-lished in any medium. We regret that owing tothe volume of correspondence we cannot replyto every letter or return letters.THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 9, 20153
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