The New Yorker - 13 June 2022

on a revolutionary-sounding slogan: “If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOMÁS MUNITA THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 49

unwanted immigrants and oppose abor- For two decades, a center-left coalition oquently named the Agreement for So-
tion and same-sex marriage. He was the known as the Concertación held power cial Peace and a New Constitution, it
son of an officer in Hitler’s Wehrmacht in a series of administrations; for an- called for a new constitutional process,
who had immigrated to Chile after the other twelve years, control of the coun- in which everyone’s voice would be heard.
war and built a fortune selling Bavarian- try alternated from the center right to On the left, the most notable signatory
style meats. Echoing Donald Trump, the center left. Chile established itself was Gabriel Boric.
Kast urged voters to “dare to make Chile as a stable,upwardly mobile nation amid
a great country.” volatile, poorer neighbors. But the eco- Boric’s efforts to defuse the unrest
nomic policies installed under Pinochet helped make him a viable candidate
In the end, Boric beat Kast by twelve didn’t fundamentally change. Inequities for President. During his campaign, he
percentage points, garnering the largest grew more severe. promised Chileans “a better life.” He
number of votes ever cast for a candi- would create a national health-care sys-
date in Chile. He represented the most By 2019, the World Inequality Re- tem, implement government-subsidized
left-wing government since the ill-fated port placed Chile near the bottom of its pensions,and eliminate student debt.He
Presidency of Salvador Allende,a social- rankings,among such states as the Cen- would alleviate poverty by creating half
ist who won power in 1970, only to be tral African Republic and Mozambique; a million new jobs, funding his propos-
overthrown three years later in a bloody one per cent of the country’s population als by raising taxes on mining corpora-
military coup, after which General Au- held twenty-seven per cent of its income. tions.He adopted a revolutionary-sound-
gusto Pinochet ruled as a right-wing dic- That October, everything burst. High- ing slogan: “If Chile was the cradle of
tator for seventeen years. school students took to the streets, pro- neoliberalism, it will also be its grave.”
testing a government-mandated subway-
To run the economy,Pinochet brought fare hike, but this was only a symbol of The day before I arrived in Chile,
in a group that became known as the deeper frustrations. As one slogan put Boric had celebrated his birthday
Chicago Boys,economists who had stud- it,“It’s not the thirty pesos, it’s the thirty with Karamanos and a few close friends.
ied at the University of Chicago under years of indifference.” The protests grew They carried on the next night, and
the libertarians Milton Friedman and into mass demonstrations, in which as I joined them as they bantered over wine
Arnold Harberger. (Kast’s older brother many as a million Chileans marched, and piscola, a head-spinning concoction
led Chile’s central bank.) The country demanding change of every kind—it of pisco,a grape-based liquor,and Coca-
became a proving ground for Latin was a sometimes cathartic, sometimes Cola. Every few minutes, Boric got up
American neoliberalismo,with wholesale bloody episode known as the estallido to tend the fire beneath an asado patagón—
deregulation and the privatization of social, or social explosion. lamb cooking on an upright iron cross.
state-controlled companies, education,
health care, and pensions. In November, 2019, after weeks of The conversation was mostly light-
growing violence, Chile’s political par- hearted, but it grew serious when it
After democracy was restored,in 1990, ties negotiated a historic pact. Grandil- turned to the vagaries of the Chilean
Chile’s governments avoided extremes. left. Even though Boric had emerged as
the leading figure,he was vilified by some
“We come in peace, we schmooze for a reasonable as amarillo, or yellow, for his willingness
amount of time, and then we can leave.” to engage in dialogue with adversaries.
On the far left, to be amarillo is tanta-
mount to being a traitor.

During the estallido, leftist extremists
had engaged in daily street confrontations
with police, and had torched churches
and public buildings. The conservative
government of the billionaire Sebastián
Piñera had deployed riot police, who at-
tacked protesters,resulting in some thirty
deaths; tear-gas cannisters and rubber
bullets caused more than three hundred
eye injuries, and a rumor spread that
Piñera’s men were aiming for the eyes.
The police were also accused of rape and
other kinds of sexual abuse. A feminist
group choreographed a dance protest,
called “A Rapist in Your Path,” which
has been performed by sympathizers
around the world.

Protesters adopted as their emblem a
fearsome black dog called Negro Ma-
tapacos, or Black Cop Killer, and soon

there were stencils of him on buildings some hundred and seventy thousand res- In 2009, Boric was elected president
everywhere, along with graffiti like “A idents amid a vast wilderness. Three- of the student union at the law school.
dead cop doesn’t rape.” By the time the quarters of them live, as Boric’s family Two years later, he became president of
protests died down, in March, 2020, the does,in Punta Arenas,a windblown town the University of Chile’s student union,
resulting damage had cost the country with a frontier spirit. Patagonians are narrowly defeating Vallejo, a geography
at least three billion dollars,and the econ- independent-minded, accustomed to major whom the Times Magazine had
omy had slowed. Piñera was forced to wind and rain and cold; they are also ac- dubbed “the world’s most glamorous
apologize for his policies and to fire sev- customed to relatively comfortable live- revolutionary.” Ambitious, bright, and
eral cabinet ministers. But many Chil- lihoods,often from sheep ranching,tour- outspoken,the four activists were friends
eans still felt contempt for law enforce- ism, or the oil industry. with differences: Vallejo and Cariola
ment and for government institutions. were Communists, Jackson and Boric
Activists heckled officials in restaurants Boric’s father, Luis Javier Boric closer to democratic socialists. In the
and on the street. In December, 2020, I Scarpa, from the Croatian side of the
visited the symbolic heart of the estal- family, is a chemical engi- 2013 elections, all four won
lido, an intersection that protesters had neer who has spent his en- parliamentary seats.
renamed the Plaza de la Dignidad. It re- tire career with the state pe-
mained a free-fire zone, where activists troleum company. Boric’s In 2018, Boric stepped
in gas masks waited for riot police to mother, María Soledad away from his parliamen-
show up and fight. The pavement was Font, of Catalan descent, is tary duties to seek treatment
scorched from flaming barricades and a former librarian and a for obsessive-compulsive
littered with projectiles, including spent member of a Catholic sect, disorder.He announced the
fire extinguishers, that had been hurled the Movimiento Apostólico news on Instagram, where
at passing cars. de Schoenstatt.The family he had 1.5 million follow-
home,a sprawling two-story ers, posting a picture of
In office, Boric faces huge challenges. house beside the Strait of himself with a deep frown.
His party and its coalition partners are Magellan,is decorated with pictures,al- “Hi everyone!” he wrote. “I
the minority in parliament, and to pass tars, and votive candles dedicated to the wanted to tell you that I am taking a
any laws he will have to negotiate agree- Virgin Mary. break for a couple of weeks. As I have
ments with his political rivals. His own said before,I have had O.C.D.,obsessive-
coalition—Apruebo Dignidad, or I Boric, the oldest of three boys, stud- compulsive disorder, ever since I was a
Choose Dignity—is riven by internal ied at Punta Arenas’s British School boy, and based on medical recommen-
disputes, especially between his closest before moving to Santiago to attend dation, I’ve now agreed to be responsi-
political allies and the Communist Party. law school at the University of Chile. ble and to seek treatment.”
Andrés Scherman, a Chilean political He finished classes in 2009,but he never Boric’s O.C.D. first appeared when
commentator and journalist, told me, practiced law. Politics, instead, became he was eight, and he often struggled at
“One of the risks of leading such a frag- his abiding interest. school. He recalled being unable to fin-
mented and heterogeneous coalition is ish Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young
that Boric ends up as a general without He emerged as a leader during the Girl” in the assigned time, because his
any troops.” Chilean Winter, a period of student O.C.D. made him go back two lines
protests that began in 2011, during the every time he accidentally skipped a
Boric has four tattoos, all of which first Presidency of Sebastián Piñera. word. There were other tics: he had to
commemorate his birthplace,in Pa- (For the sixteen years before Boric’s blink four times before leaving his bed-
tagonia—Chile’s most remote region, election, Piñera traded four-year terms room, and when he walked he always
known by the romantic name Ma- with the Socialist politician Michelle started with his left foot.
gallanes and the Chilean Antarctic. Bachelet, because Chile’s Presidents are Discussing his O.C.D. was politi-
During one of our first meetings, he forbidden to serve two terms in a row.) cally risky; in one debate, Kast used it
rolled up his sleeves to show them to A previous round of demonstrations, in to insinuate that he wasn’t fit for office.
me. One, on his forearm, depicted a 2006, had been known as the Penguin But Boric’s candor attracted public sym-
lighthouse above a roiling sea. Another Revolution, because it was led by high- pathy. In his Presidential acceptance
was an intricate map that included the school students who often marched in speech, Boric said that more needed to
Beagle Channel,where his great-grand- their black-and-white uniforms. The be done for mental illness in Chile, and
father,an émigré from Croatia,had come Chilean Winter protests were led by the audience responded with a huge
in 1887 to search for gold. Boric unbut- university students, who took up some round of applause.
toned his shirt to reveal his right shoul- of the same demands, including greater
der,which was inked with a native lenga state support for education and an end Gabriel García Márquez once quipped
tree, a symbol of Patagonia. He smiled to subsidies for private schools—a leg- that Chile was the only place in
and said,“I’m going to be the first Pres- acy of the Pinochet years, which had Latin America where newsboys hawked
ident from Magallanes in two hundred hollowed out public education. Among copies of the country’s laws on the street.
years of autonomous Chile.” them were Boric and a handful of other Democracy and stability are the norm.
activists who have become prominent: After winning independence from Spain,
Magallanes is Chile’s Alaska, with Giorgio Jackson, Camila Vallejo, and in the nineteenth century, Chile had six
Karol Cariola.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 51

In Chile’s estallido social, or social explosion, protests demanding change turned into violent conflicts with police.

decades of relative political quietude— ety. The right launched terror attacks. ple were murdered and many more were
far longer than most of its neighbors. Fidel Castro came and stayed for three tortured and imprisoned.Half a century
Later, it developed a multiparty system, weeks, appearing at rallies and telling later, Chile has not entirely recovered.
and experienced another half century of Chileans they should prepare to fight
peaceful democracy before Pinochet to defend their “revolution.” But,as despotic as Pinochet was,even
seized power. he embodied some of Chile’s institu-
Allende’s reforms were nonviolent, tionalist tendencies. After seven years
But alongside Chile’s institutional in contrast with Castro’s advocacy of in power, he sought to legitimatize his
habits runs a current of anarchism and armed rebellion. He embodied the pos- tenure by drafting a new constitution.
bohemianism. In the years before the sibility of a different kind of Latin Amer- In Santiago, Pinochet once explained
coup, the country was shaken by duel- ican socialism, closer to Scandinavia to me that the old constitution had been
ling political extremes. When Allende than to the U.S.S.R. Still, his govern- a drag on his power. “You have to be
was elected, in 1970, it was the height ment alarmed Chile’s conservative es- able to set the goalposts to be able to
of the Cold War, and both the U.S. and tablishment: politicians, the armed act!” he said. “So I set the goalposts.”
the Soviet Union saw Chile as a strate- forces, the private sector. Corporate in-
gic battleground. Although Allende terests in the United States were also In 1988, Pinochet held a referendum,
gained power legitimately, he won the dismayed, and they urged the White hoping to secure eight more years in
popular vote by a razor-thin margin, at House to do something.The Nixon Ad- power. This time, he lost, but he didn’t
the head of a left-wing coalition. ministration devised covert plans to un- entirely withdraw. He kept command
seat Allende, with help from the C.I.A. of the armed forces, and had arranged
In office, Allende instituted a pro- for himself to be named a senator for
gram that he called the “Chilean path In the end, Pinochet and his allies life, along with nine handpicked asso-
to socialism,”nationalizing copper mines in the military did it for them. The Air ciates. He had parliamentary immunity
and banks, confiscating large landhold- Force bombarded the Presidential pal- and, through an alliance with right-
ings, and increasing social protections ace, and on September 11, 1973, Allende wing political parties, effective control
for the poor. Radicals and revolution- killed himself, using an AK-47 that of the legislature.
aries poured in from around the region. Castro had given him. In the aftermath
Chile’s most militant leftists agitated came an onslaught of repression, in Pinochet’s grip on Chile was loos-
for a sweeping transformation of soci- which more than three thousand peo- ened in 1998, by a surprise arrest. As he
visited the United Kingdom, the Span-

52 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

ish judge Baltasar Garzón had him ise of education reform, but she had be- beer and spat on him,Boric stayed seated
apprehended on charges of genocide, come embroiled in a scandal involving and quietly stared them down. His calm
torture, and terrorism. Pinochet was ul- her son and a questionable bank loan. response was widely praised.
timately allowed to return home, but he
was diminished, and spent the rest of Boric, in his early days as a parlia- When the proposal for a new con-
his life fighting prosecution. In 2005, he mentarian, was bright, intense, and am- stitution was put to a referendum, it was
was discovered to have stashed millions bitious, but new to politics and looking approved overwhelmingly, by seventy-
of dollars of pilfered government funds for guidance. Born in 1986, he hardly eight per cent of voters. A constitutional
in more than a hundred and twenty con- remembered the Pinochet years and, congress was elected: a hundred and
cealed bank accounts, with help from like others of his generation, he felt im- fifty-five representatives,of whom three-
the U.S.-based Riggs Bank. When Pi- patient with moderate reforms.Fernán- quarters were leftists or independents.
nochet died,the following year,few Chil- dez had come of age under the dicta- They included Fernández, who had run
eans mourned his passing. torship and had learned to value the at the urging of friends.
freedoms brought about by the Con-
After his widow, Lucía Hiriart, died, certación governments. He had his ear The convencionales,as they are known,
last December, at the age of ninety- to the ground,and could tell Boric things were given until this July to draft a con-
eight, the streets of Santiago filled with that he wouldn’t hear elsewhere. stitution, which they will submit to a
crowds drinking champagne and shout- referendum in the fall.In a column after
ing in celebration. One placard read Since then, the two had built a close the Presidential election, Fernández
“Chau vieja CTM ”—a slogan, abbre- friendship, with Boric coming often to wrote, “Gabriel Boric knows perfectly
viating the local epithet concha tu madre, Fernández’s home for dinner or to play well that the destiny of his Presidency
that translates roughly as “Bye-bye, you chess with his teen-age son,León.When is inextricably linked to that of this con-
old bitch.” their conversations ran late, Boric slept stitutional process.” But, as the conven-
on the couch. These days, Fernández cionales began drafting proposals, the
The evening before Boric left for his likes to tell visitors, “The President has pragmatic spirit that Boric embodied
island vacation,we met at the home slept where you are sitting.” often seemed absent. A veteran Marx-
of the writer Patricio (Pato) Fernández, ist named María Magdalena Rivera sol-
in the suburb of Providencia. Fifty-two, During the estallido social, the two emnly proposed a Soviet-style system
with a Teddy-bear build and an easy men were drawn into the national de- in which all state institutions would be
sense of humor, Fernández is a politi- bate over how to end the upheaval. In replaced by a “Multinational Assembly
cal commentator and the founder of “Sobre la Marcha,” a book Fernández of Workers and Peoples”that would ex-
The Clinic, a satirical newspaper that he wrote about the demonstrations, he ar- clude such “parasitic figures” as senior
started in order to poke fun at Pino- gued in favor of the Agreement for So- clergy, the military, and owners of cor-
chet. (The name refers to the British cial Peace and a New Constitution, say- porations. An environmental commis-
medical facility where Pinochet was re- ing that the process could help calm sion proposed special protections for
covering from back surgery when he Chile’s civil strife and address its endemic fungi. One convencional, a tattooed man
was arrested.) Fernández’s paper is gen- social inequities, “so that after leaving with a shaved head known as Baldy
erally progressive, but it does not spare behind the time for throwing stones, as Vade, was ejected; he had run for office
the left: one memorable cover depicted Ecclesiastes once said, we can enter the on an inspiring story of surviving can-
Nicolás Maduro,the obstreperous leader time of gathering them together.” cer, which it turned out he’d never had.
of Venezuela, with donkey ears, under
the headline “Nicolás Maburro.” Boric’s party,Social Convergence,op- Many of the impractical proposals
posed the agreement, which it saw as an were rejected. But the media, particu-
At Fernández’s house, Boric wore impediment to more foundational re- larly on the right,have presented a steady
his habitual outfit of jeans,beat-up boots, forms.But,Fernández recalled,“I argued drip of news about the more bizarre ideas.
and a checked flannel shirt. He had strongly in favor. Even though it wasn’t If the constitutional congress fails, it
brought along pisco and Coca-Cola, a demand of the groups on the street, it would be disastrous for Boric’s govern-
and periodically refilled a red plastic seemed like most of their demands could ment, potentially reviving his opponents
cup.He sent his Presidential bodyguards find common cause in a new constitu- on both the right and the hard left.
out to buy beef,and then bustled around tion.” In the end, Boric signed—in his Fernández wrote, “Success will require
a grill in the garden. own name, rather than as a representa- the building of new forms of trust, of a
tive of Social Convergence. The Party cohesion gained through new civilizing
I had spent an evening with Fernán- suspended him,but the deal went through. challenges, and the complicity of diverse
dez and Boric in 2015, at a bar near the As Boric saw it, he’d gambled his po- sectors of Chilean society.” He meant
Punta Arenas waterfront called the litical capital in order to get rid of “Pi- that Boric needed to bring together a
Shackleton, for the Anglo-Irish explorer nochet’s constitution once and for all.” divided country before it fell apart.
who limped into Chile after his ordeal
in Antarctica. It was winter in Patago- Social Convergence eventually took Chile is known as one of Latin
nia, and a cold wind whipped outside as Boric back, but he retained some ene- America’s “poetic countries,” the
Boric and Fernández talked intently about mies on the street. Soon after signing birthplace of Pablo Neruda, Gabriela
Michelle Bachelet’s latest travails.Bachelet the agreement, he was sitting in a park Mistral, and Nicanor Parra. Another
had staked her Presidency on the prom- when a group of leftists began cursing poetic country is Nicaragua, the home
at him, accusing him of having “sold out
the people.” As they soaked him with

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 53

of Rubén Darío and also of Gioconda Later, Boric took a trip to Israel and will have total commitment to democ-
Belli—a poet and writer who has been Palestine. “It was the most brutal thing racy and human rights, without support
exiled for fiercely criticizing her coun- I’ve ever experienced,” he recalled. He for any kind of dictatorship or autoc-
try’s despotic ruler,Daniel Ortega.Boric spoke heatedly about the wall dividing racy.” He had already criticized Daniel
invited Belli to represent Nicaragua at the West Bank from Israel, and about Ortega’s regime for repressing political
his swearing-in.The day after the cer- what he felt was a policy of “humilia- opponents,and had sharply chastised the
emony, a lunch in her honor was held tion” of the Palestinians. After the elec- Cuban government for cracking down
in the elegant apartment of the writer tion, Boric’s nominee for agriculture after protests last year. He characterized
Carla Guelfenbein. minister wrote to say that the Israeli Nicolás Maduro’s tenure in Venezuela as
Ambassador had invited them to a pre- a “failed experiment.”In retaliation,Mad-
Among the guests was Chile’s de- sentation about water use. Chile was in uro suggested that Boric was a member
facto poet laureate, Raúl Zurita, a the midst of a sustained drought, and of a new “cowardly left.”
bearded man of seventy-two. During the Israelis are renowned for their ad-
the Presidential campaign, he had pre- vances in drip irrigation. The minister After Boric returned from vacation,
sented Boric with a manifesto of sup- assured Boric that the Ambassador was his close friend Emiliano Salvo
port, signed by more than five hundred a progressive, raised on a kibbutz. Boric threw another asado.Boric arrived wear-
Chilean writers, which expressed fear was unconvinced.“We have to have some ing a loud Hawaiian shirt and a base-
that a Kast government risked “taking sort of political discussion first,” he told ball cap with the name of the Spanish
us back to the darkest moments in our me. “I mean, we cannot normalize this punk band Siniestro Total. The island
history.” In a less restrained mood, Zu- degree of brutalization.” had been idyllic, he said—raw nature,
rita had told an interviewer that he was hardly any other tourists.
“ready to commit suicide rather than During the Presidential campaign,
vote” for Kast. Boric called Israel a “genocidal, mur- Salvo’s apartment was in a sixties-era
derous state.”In a subsequent interview, building that looked out toward the An-
At lunch, Zurita was feeling cele- he affirmed that statement but noted dean foothills. He said that it reminded
bratory, as were most of the guests; that he would say the same about Tur- him of East Berlin, where he lived as a
speeches were interrupted frequently key’s treatment of Kurds, and China’s child. His father was a socialist who had
by champagne toasts. Things quieted of Uyghurs. Chile has a significant been jailed and tortured by Pinochet’s
when Belli spoke about her new life in population of ethnic Palestinians—as regime. In exile, he met Salvo’s mother,
Madrid, and recalled the death of an many as five hundred thousand, in a a German Communist, and they settled
old friend who had been jailed on Or- country of nineteen million people— in an apartment near Alexanderplatz.
tega’s orders. Belli’s presence at the and Boric’s sentiments caused little con- Salvo said fondly that his mother was a
swearing-in was a coded rebuke: Or- troversy. But the Jewish population, little nostalgic for the old East Germany,
tega and his wife and co-leader, Rosa- about eighteen thousand people, was like the mother in the movie “Good Bye
rio Murillo, were not invited. unsettled. Following the election, Ge- Lenin!”:“She refuses to see that the world
rardo Gorodischer, who leads a prom- has changed.”
For Boric, this kind of intrigue was inent organization called the Jewish
just a small indicator of the geopoliti- Community of Chile, told me that he Boric and Salvo spoke wistfully about
cal problems that he might face.During their youthful admiration for the early
one of our conversations, he confessed looked forward to presenting Boric with years of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolu-
that he wished he’d seen more of the “additional viewpoints from the Jewish tion. When Hugo Chávez died, in 2013,
world before becoming President. He community, in the hope that some of Boric tweeted, “Much strength to the
had taken his first trip outside the re- his past expressions can be toned down.” Venezuelan people.There are many Chil-
gion when he was thirteen, going with eans who are with you. To the deepen-
his family to Disney World. He threw After the first round of elections, in ing of the Bolivarian revolution!” Salvo
up his hands and laughed with embar- which Kast took the lead, Boric moved brought out a gift he’d received in 2017:
rassment. At seventeen, he’d lived for closer to the center. His Communist a windbreaker in the colors of the Ven-
four months in a village near Nancy, Party coalition partners continued to ezuelan flag, like the one that Chávez
France, but he’d seen little of the coun- support the leftist autocracies in Cuba, had made iconic. Lamenting the way
try. It was soon after the U.S. invaded Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Boric had that things had turned out in Venezu-
Iraq, and his host family was too wor- taken a contrary position, tweeting, “No ela,Salvo muttered something about the
ried about retaliatory terror attacks to matter who it bothers, our government loss of innocence and then put his wind-
allow him to visit Paris. Instead, Boric breaker away.
stayed close to the village, and the fa-
ther, a veteran of the Algerian war, re- On the balcony, Boric searched on
galed him with stories about throwing his phone for a poem: “Shocked,Angry,”
prisoners from helicopters. A few years the Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti’s
later,Boric joined his parents on a Med- response to Che Guevara’s killing, in
iterranean tour, but he caught no more 1967. Standing amid friends and aides,
than a glimpse of Europe. “Rome, he read in a theatrical voice, with a fin-
Prague, Cairo, Athens—a day in each ger held aloft for emphasis: “One finger
place,” he said, shrugging. is / enough to show us the way / to ac-

54 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

A SPELL TO BANISH GRIEF to the center. When I asked if he had a
role model, he said, a little hesitantly,
Only when you wake to a fistful of pulled hair that he had always admired Allende,
on the floor beside your bed and, from a glance, but that he didn’t have “static role mod-
can guess its weight, when you study dried tear els.” It wasn’t because he was a chame-
streaks on your cheeks like a farmer figuring out leon,he clarified—it was because he was
where the season went wrong, when a friend calls “continually evolving.”
out your name three or four times before you know
your name is yours, when your name fits like clothes International Women’s Day is a huge
you’ve suddenly outgrown, when there is too much event in Santiago, and this year some
of you, too few of you, too you of you, and the mirrors three hundred thousand women marched
wish all of you would just look away, when the clocks along one of the main avenues, heading
can’t feel their hands and the calendars begin to doubt to a rally in the city center. I joined a
themselves, when you begin to agree with the glares crowd of women and girls with painted
from mirrors but your reflection follows you around faces and clothes in the feminist colors
the house anyway, when you catch yourself drunk of purple and green. There were almost
on memory, candles lit, eyes closed, your head tilted no other men in sight, but no one asked
in the direction of cemetery grass, yellow and balding me to leave.
above what’s left of the body that birthed you, and you
try to remember the sound of laughter in her throat Hundreds of women gathered to
and fail, only then, orphan, will I take all my selves chant and sing and wave banners at the
and leave. Plaza de la Dignidad. Situated at a spot
where police and protesters had regu-
—Saeed Jones larly done battle, the plaza contained a
stone plinth supporting a bronze statue
cuse the monster and its firebrands/to Boric told me, “We have the oppor- of a historic Chilean figure, General
pull the triggers again.” tunity to reimagine the left.” But he Baquedano, on horseback. During the
knows that the crucial dichotomy in the estallido, authorities had removed the
Despite Boric’s feeling for resonant region is less between left and right than statue, leaving only the plinth, which
language, he is wary of the rhetoric of between democracy and populist au- was now covered in graffiti,as were many
the hard left. He felt that the zero-sum thoritarianism. Boric—young and un- nearby buildings, some of which had
discourse of the past several decades had burdened by the past—seems likely to also been torched.
“served more as a poison than as a fer- be the politician who can best articu-
tilizer.” Since before Boric was born, late the benefits of a greater freedom Women held placards with outraged
Fidel Castro had exercised an outsized from ideology. After the election, he slogans: “It’s a dress, not a yes,” “What
influence on the Latin American left, named a much admired establishment you call love is just unpaid work,”“Muerte
promoting an absolutist approach to economist in his sixties as his finance al macho.” One sign read “We’re the
power and politics. The leaders who chief, which helped calm Chile’s jittery granddaughters of the witches you
sought to follow Fidel Castro’s exam- markets and business community. As weren’t able to burn.” A nearly naked
ple most closely had miserable results: Fernández said,“The appointment sent woman walked past, holding burning
Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, in an important signal that Gabriel isn’t torches aloft. With a rope around her
Venezuela, and Daniel Ortega, in Nic- some crazy revolutionary.”Kast, despite waist, she pulled a wagon carrying an-
aragua.There are other leftist leaders in the inflammatory rhetoric of his cam- other woman, dressed in queenly garb.
the hemisphere,including Andrés Man- paign,made clear his willingness to work Elsewhere, two women collaborated on
uel López Obrador, in Mexico, and Al- with the new administration.Soon after a performance: one methodically washed
berto Fernández, in Argentina. But, de- the polls closed, he tweeted, “Boric is pink panties and pinned them to a
spite their revolutionary pretensions, our President now, and he deserves all clothesline, while another, kneeling, re-
their political systems often seem most of our respect and constructive collab- peatedly dunked her head in the wash-
concerned with preserving their hold oration. Chile always comes first.” tub. Not far away, Irina Karamanos
on power. Of the surviving lions of the marched with several of Boric’s female
left, just two have retained their status: Many of Boric’s people, in the U.S. cabinet ministers, holding a banner that
José (Pepe) Mujica, the former guerrilla context, would be Bernie Sanders sup- read “Democracy in the nation,at home,
who was the President of Uruguay a de- porters. As his longtime political com- and in bed.”
cade ago and has since retired to his rade Giorgio Jackson put it to me,“We’re
farm, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of more Allendista than Fidelista. It’s like When I mentioned the Women’s
Brazil,who may return to power in elec- we’ve been germinated with that de- Day march to Ricardo Lagos, the Pres-
tions in October. mocracy seed.” Boric himself is closer ident from 2000 to 2006, he seemed
delighted. “This used to be a country
of gray suits,” he said. “But in the past
thirty years there has been a huge cul-
tural opening!” A grandfatherly man
of eighty-four, he received me in his

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 55

“I’m just sad that because I got cocky and used that condescending tone Karamanos moved into a new house:
I ended up losing our argument even though I was right.” a rambling former clinic in an old sec-
tion of downtown. Boric said excitedly
•• that it had thirteen rooms, a big step
up from the small apartment they’d
book-filled office at his foundation,De- to block reforms. “Our problem has shared before; he would finally have
mocracy and Development. been both figuring how to deal with space for his books.
the ensemble that we inherited from
As a young man, Lagos had been Pinochet and how to create a new en- The neighborhood, Yungay, con-
nominated as Allende’s Ambassador to semble,” he said. sisted of two- and three-story homes
the Soviet Union,and had fled into exile from around the turn of the twentieth
when Pinochet seized power. Return- In the hope of fostering greater unity, century. I found Boric on the second
ing home a few years later, he became Pato Fernández had introduced Boric to floor of a low Art Deco building, alone
the first prominent Chilean to speak out Lagos during the Presidential campaign. with a huge pile of unpacked boxes.
against Pinochet on live TV. As Presi- Lagos told me,“I can’t say we’re friends— From the window, we could see cara-
dent,he represented the center-left Con- the generational difference is too great. bineros at a barricade at the end of the
certación coalition. “We opened this But I look favorably on him.” He added block, where a group of curious people
country up,” Lagos said. “Chile was a that he had liked Boric’s Presidential ac- were being kept at bay. The area was
different Chile then. There wasn’t even ceptance speech,saying,“He understands run-down, known for drug deals and
a divorce law in this country! In 1993, he has to be a statesman.” He had espe- persistent crime, but Boric and Kara-
when I first ran for President, I said that cially appreciated Boric’s stance on the manos didn’t want to live in one of the
I would pass one, and they didn’t elect Russian invasion of Ukraine.On the first barrios altos—the posh neighborhoods
me.We finally managed it ten years later.” day of the war, while Boric and Kara- of Santiago. Boric said that he hoped
He noted that it wasn’t until the Presi- manos were still in the Juan Fernández their presence in Yungay would help
dency of Michelle Bachelet, his fel- Islands, Boric had tweeted,“From Chile make things better.
low-Socialist, that abortion in cases of we condemn the invasion of Ukraine,
rape was legalized. the violation of its sovereignty and the In one room,Boric had his only piece
illegitimate use of force. Our solidarity of furniture, an old-fashioned rolltop
Many leftists insist that Chile’s cur- will be with the victims, and our hum- desk. He had bought it from a second-
rent problems are an inheritance of past ble efforts will be on behalf of peace.” hand store, he said, stroking it with
governments’ failure to create a fairer Lagos concluded, “I like his use of the pride. His laptop was open, and he ex-
society. To them, Lagos was a neolib- word ‘humble.’ It shows that he under- plained that he was working on his
eral.Lagos suggested that the insistence stands his place in the world.” speech for the inauguration. He was
on ideological purity was part of the feeling “a bit nervous, finally,” he con-
problem.He and his allies had provided La Moneda, the Presidential palace, fessed. He’d been distracting himself by
educational opportunities and public was restored after Pinochet’s bomb- dipping into books—one about the
housing for the poor.“It wasn’t enough,” ing, but Chile’s modern Presidents have twentieth-century Chilean dictator Car-
he conceded. But they didn’t have the lived in their own homes. A few days los Ibáñez del Campo, another about
votes to do more, he said; Chile’s right- before Boric’s inauguration, he and libertarian thought.
wing legislators had wielded veto power
Boric wanted to greet the people at
the barricade, so we walked together,
his plainclothes bodyguards fanning
out. He stopped at a doorway, where a
young man handed him a flag of a Ma-
gallanes soccer club. They embraced,
and Boric stood for a selfie.

At the barricade, about fifty people
had assembled, waving cell phones and
calling out to Boric. For ten minutes, he
moved along the line, posing for selfies,
shaking hands, kissing elderly women,
and listening to his new constituents. A
woman complained about the state of
her mother in a hospital; a man said he
was having labor problems at a mine.

Back in the apartment, Boric ges-
tured toward a neglected exercise ma-
chine, mentioning that he was feeling
out of shape. He said that as President
he hoped to take some time for him-
self every day, but it seemed unlikely

56 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

that his duties would allow it.He showed In Chile, the indigenous Mapuche up, and Boric, whose handlers had in-
me a gift from a woman in the crowd people had resisted Spain’s conquista- structed him to walk in time with the
below: a bearded doll woven to look dores,sometimes defeating them in bat- music, headed toward the palace in
like him. “That’s nothing,” he said. tle. But the Mapuche—afflicted by po- an awkward half march. Midway there,
Walking over to a stack of boxes, he litical marginalization, endemic poverty, he stopped for a long moment in front
pulled out a huge plastic bag of gifts and land grabs by outsiders—have re- of a bronze statue of Allende, his head
that people had pressed upon him: more mained a restive social force. An unre- reverently bowed.
effigies, and hundreds of notes. solved conflict has simmered in their
central-Chilean homeland of Araucanía, When Boric appeared on the bal-
Through the window,I saw a woman south of Santiago. The violence has es- cony, he spoke of how rockets had
waving excitedly from her apartment, calated lately, with land takeovers, arson, once pierced the building where he
across the narrow street. Boric smiled and occasional killings. Piñera sent in stood. Never again, he suggested,
and waved back, but he looked over- troops on “pacification” missions, which would the Chilean state repress its
whelmed. He murmured, “It’s all a bit were both brutal and ineffective. Boric own people. He spoke about the coun-
‘Truman Show,’ isn’t it?” had criticized this strategy and vaguely try’s burdens: peasants without ac-
promised a new approach. The Mapu- cess to water, students saddled with
On March 11th, Boric was inaugu- che conflict is one of the more delicate debt, retirees without adequate pen-
rated, in Valparaíso, an hour’s drive issues facing him as President. (Later, sions, relatives of the disappeared,
from Santiago.The ceremony took place when his interior minister visited Arau- still waiting for their loved ones. Sev-
in Chile’s congressional building— canía, shots were fired near her convoy, eral times, he said, “Never again,” re-
a concrete behemoth that Pinochet erected in an apparent act of intimidation.) An- peating it in his reedy tenor like an
near the location of his childhood home. other pressing issue is rising discontent incantation.
As Boric took his position onstage, over migrants; as many as 1.5 million of
he stepped behind Piñera, his predeces- them have flooded into Chile from As a half-moon rose, a rhyming
sor, and executed a curious maneuver in- poorer countries, especially Venezuela, chant broke out in the crowd: “Boric,
volving a complete pirouette; his O.C.D. Colombia, and Haiti. friend, the people are with you.” He
was flaring up. But the ceremony went called for unity. “We have to embrace
smoothly, and at the end Congress rose When Boric finally met King Felipe, one another as a society, to love one
to applaud. Evidently unsure which ges- there was evidently not much to say— another again, to smile again,”he said.
ture best represented him,Boric acknowl- just a polite handshake before moving He referred to “violence in the world,
edged them by placing a hand over his down the line of international guests. and now a war as well”—an allusion
heart,pumping a fist in the air,and clasp- Aside from the King, there were few to Ukraine—and said, “Chile will al-
ing his palms together: namaste. conservatives. Bolsonaro had made a ways take the side of human rights,
point of boycotting, though he wouldn’t no matter where, no matter what the
Afterward,Boric was driven through have been welcome anyway. The leftist color of government involved.”When
the streets in a 1966 black Ford Galaxie contingent was much stronger, includ- he said, “We must heal the wounds
convertible—a gift from Queen Eliza- ing members of Spain’s Podemos move- of the estallido social,”the crowd roared
beth II that has been used by Chile’s ment.The left-leaning Presidents of Ar- its approval. After Boric’s speech,
Presidents since Allende. By the time Karamanos crossed the balcony, and
he arrived at the grounds of La Moneda, gentina, Peru, and Bolivia also came, as they kissed. As the audience chanted
it was almost sundown.Boric would ad- did the Colombian Presidential candi- his name, Boric gripped the railing,
dress the nation from a balcony outside date Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla. gazing out. He seemed aware that
the office where Allende had recorded After the inauguration, Petro and Boric there would be no more free applause.
his final speech, in 1973. Even though tweeted a selfie of themselves smiling
the inauguration ceremony was an oblig- and making heart shapes with their hands. When it was all over, people began
atory ritual, he had told me, he was re- to move away from La Moneda, head-
ally looking forward to the address. Before walking the red carpet into ing home or out to celebrate more.
La Moneda, Boric veered off to Venders sold beer, along with Boric
Among Boric’s obligations was a re- take selfies with well-wishers, hun- flags and mugs and T-shirts.The city
ception at which he greeted foreign dig- dreds of whom were straining at a po- had a festive, ragged atmosphere,
nitaries. A few days earlier, he had told lice line. Then a military band struck as if a concert had just let out. As I
me that the King of Spain was coming. approached the Plaza de la Digni-
With a vexed look, he said, “What the dad, though, the crowds grew sparse,
fuck do I have to say to a king?” and it was soon clear why. A few
blocks ahead, protesters had built bar-
Most Latin American leftists hold ricades across the avenue and set them
Spain’s monarchy in disdain, because of ablaze. They had strung up a banner
its associations with colonial rule. In across one with a message for Boric:
2019, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, “We won’t forget that you made a
the Mexican President, wrote to King pact with the enemy, and we won’t
Felipe demanding an apology for Spain’s leave the streets until liberation is
“abuses” in his country. The King did complete.” 
not reply.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 57

FICTION

Souvankham Thammavongsa

58 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

Idon’t know why I didn’t think of my shift. I had been on my feet for she told one about a pigeon her son
someone like Miss Emily. It never eight hours, so I wasn’t looking too had picked up off the road in front of
occurred to me to imagine her. I hot or feeling that great about my­ their house when he was about ten
guess you could say I lacked imagi­ self. But I didn’t think of things like years old. She didn’t know that what
nation. I married her son after know­ that, impressions—first impressions— he had there with him was a pigeon.
ing him for only five days. A whirl­ what they mean and how people don’t She thought that he had been injured,
wind romance. change their feelings about you even that there had been an accident some­
years after. where, but he was smiling at her with
I was the cashier at the local super­ all that blood on him, and she was
market. Her son came in on Tuesdays I was wearing jeans and a pair of relieved to find out that he just had
to shop, to get discounts. I thought he old runners, and a sweatshirt several a dead bird. She said her son was al­
was someone who didn’t spend lav­ sizes too large. My hair was tied back ways finding things like that—dead
ishly even though he could. I could in a low ponytail. I wasn’t wearing any animals, caps and bottles, old books—
tell he came from good people. He makeup. Like I said, I didn’t think of and bringing them home. She said he
always wore a nice suit, and he had things like that at the time. always asked her to make something
this beautiful coat, the kind of fab­ out of them.
ric that made you want to reach out I got into the back seat, where Miss
and touch. Emily was sitting alone. She took my When her son drove us back to his
face in, all its details and pores, as­ apartment, she asked me about my
Of course, I could never do any­ sessed what kind of skin care or serum family. I said it was just me. My par­
thing like that. I am not that bold. I might need, and kept those thoughts ents weren’t around anymore. They
And, anyway, we weren’t allowed to to herself. She smiled politely, and died in a car crash. I should have left
behave that way with customers. I told me she was so glad to meet me— it at that, but Miss Emily had spent
wasn’t selling clothes. I scanned bar the girl her son had married. all evening telling me stories, and she
codes. We were instructed only to take was so open and honest that I wanted
the coupons and the cash, or to press I was family now, she said, and to say more. My dad had been drink­
the buttons for the credit­card ma­ it wasn’t up to her to say anything ing and really shouldn’t have got be­
chines.We don’t accept personal checks about that. Her son was, after all, his hind the wheel. He was speeding. Ran
anymore, we were told to say. own man. a red light. It was raining. The car, a
cheap old thing, was totalled.
The evening I actually met Miss For as long as she could remem­
Emily’s son, I was finishing up my ber, all she ever wanted was a family, I was in my last year of high school
shift when I saw him come in. He too. Her husband had died a few years when all this happened. My parents
seemed real glamorous, and I hadn’t ago. Heart attack. Sudden. She had didn’t have life insurance. The car in­
seen someone like that before so close married him right after college. Gone surance had expired and no one had
up, looking right back at me. He cer­ to law school, made partner, owned bothered to renew it. There were no
tainly was not like the kind of peo­ her own practice. Had three children. savings or anything like that. So I had
ple I’d grown up around. The kind Bought property. She could afford to to quit school and get a job to pay
who cuss, grab their crotch, belch. If travel and take vacations abroad. rent. I wasn’t in a position to spend a
they didn’t like you, you’d know about few weeks or months sending out ré­
it and they’d say it to your face.There She had bettered herself. She’d sumés, going on interviews. I needed
was no pretending. worked very hard for what she had, a job right away, and the supermarket
she said. She had been—at one point gave me one.
I helped him carry some things to in her life, so she knows these things—
his car, and we got to talking. I liked what people called trash. She’d im­ I didn’t want to live with anyone
talking to him. He was funny and proved herself, she said. Moved on and was proud to find a place I could
friendly and polite. That’s all I really up, pulled herself up by her bootstraps, have all to myself. It was across the
need to know about anyone. I remem­ got to work, and no one could use street from a park. It had one win­
ber now that it snowed. Large, fluffy, that word to describe her anymore. dow. Hardwood floors, a bathtub, toi­
soft f lakes that made you think of She made sure of that, she said. let, a stove, and a fridge. I wasn’t a
diamonds. That night, I went home person who needed much. I put up
with him, and the rest, as they say, is Over dinner that night, at a restau­ bookshelves and set a mattress on the
history. We got married. rant, she told me loving stories floor. An actress, I was told, had lived
of her son when he was a child. How there. She gave up the place when
I met Miss Emily not long after he’d wanted to be a grass cutter at a she got a big break out in Los An­
marrying her son, on a Friday eve­ baseball stadium in a big city when geles. I thought it was good luck to
ning. She took the earliest flight she he grew up. His first girlfriend, his move into that space. Maybe I would
could get to come see her son. She crushes and heartbreaks. His prom, catch a big break myself. I didn’t know
thought I was pregnant because of and his pets. I loved hearing these what, exactly, that might be, but it
how sudden it was. I was not. stories. She made them so vivid was something to believe in and hope
and funny. for, too.
She was so eager to meet me. She
made her son drive her to the super­ The bill came, and she paid. I I was telling all this to Miss Emily,
market, and they waited in the park­ begged her to tell me one more story.
ing lot for two hours until I finished She thought for a moment. And then

ILLUSTRATION BY MARTA MONTEIRO

and when I paused she asked me if I like these. And they usually ignored five years and was now emotionally
might quit the job at the supermar- me, knowing that I wouldn’t buy any- spent. She told me all the things that
ket, now that I’d married her son. I thing, anyway. were wrong with him. How his hair
told her I really loved the supermar- needed to be cut, his toenails and fin-
ket. I felt loyal to the place. I had been With Miss Emily, the salesgirl was gernails needed to be trimmed, how
there for fifteen years. I’d worked my real attentive and friendly. Miss Emily he hadn’t brushed his teeth for days.
way up, too. was so at ease.Talking with the sales- She said, “He snores at night! How
girl, asking her to bring us things in can you not hear that sleeping next
It was a grand place. All those a size that would be a better fit. Ask- to him?” She then began to describe
shelves of food. You didn’t have to go ing the salesgirl her opinion about me with words like stupid and dumb.
very far to get anything. The eggs what young professional women wore She kept telling me to think, think,
were near the steaks. You didn’t have to the office these days. She told me think. She said her son had never
to spend hours making the perfect that, since her son worked in an of- been like this when she had him. She
cake or rolling thin sheets of dough fice, she didn’t want me to feel out of said, “What have you done to him?”
to make croissants. You didn’t have to place. I would never buy these things She took a spray bottle and sprayed
own any land or take out feed or work for myself, I said. I don’t have that surfaces, and scrubbed and scrubbed.
up the nerve to kill anything that had kind of money to spend, I told her. She didn’t want to look at my face,
a face. Someone somewhere did that She said she would take care of it. she said.
work for you, and it was all there on She was so happy to be in a position
display. Each and every item was given to help, and all that mattered was that I went outside to the front porch
a bar code of its very own, everything I loved the things I picked out. and sat on a step. I wondered where
was kept track of. The feel of the her son was. Why he had been gone
cash-machine tray as it popped out After getting back to her son’s for most of the day, and when he
and hit me on the arm was like an apartment and putting away my new would be back. I thought about a
old friend checking in throughout clothes, Miss Emily began finding mother’s love. The incredible gener-
the day. other ways to be useful. I honestly osity it required from you. Her son
thought she would be exhausted after had taken in a stranger, someone
But Miss Emily didn’t see it that all that shopping. We had been at the else’s child, and, whatever this thing
way. She wanted me to go back to clothing store for several hours, un- was with the two of them, she felt
school, get my diploma, go to college, dressing and dressing me, putting that she, too, had to love and give
and look for something better. These things back, changing our minds, everything she had, even if she
kinds of things cost money to have, I wanting to see things in other colors didn’t want to. I knew that, whatever
thought. I didn’t say that to her. I knew before deciding. All that sifting, try- she felt about me, it was true to her,
she was the type of person who ing, directing, imagining was a lot and that there was some truth to it.
wouldn’t use that as an excuse for any- of work. I wasn’t good enough for her, and
thing. She just wanted the best for I never would be. But I wanted
me, she said. It was exactly what my Suddenly, what had been her sweet, her love. I guess it was like a child
own mother would have wanted for warm voice turned hoarse and cold. wishing to see a crowd of gold stars
me, if she’d wanted anything for me. She became frazzled, asking me to do next to her name. Proof that she’d
I loved Miss Emily right away then. something—anything,really—to clean done good that day, and that some-
She was so ambitious for me. And the house. Pointing a beautifully pol- one had taken the time to see that.
who, really, had dreams for you that ished nail at me. “You,” she said. “You There isn’t anything like that for you
you didn’t even know you could wish do something about this.” as an adult, and the feeling of want-
for all by yourself ? ing one star—any star—never does
I didn’t know what had upset her so. disappear entirely.
Miss Emily smelled like fresh roses. She kept saying,“Can’t you see this?”
She was soft and warm. Miss I was honest with her. I didn’t know Just then, I saw a creature crawl
Emily loved being a mother, and now what the big deal was, and, truly, I toward me. I thought it was a lost cat,
I was one of hers. That weekend, she hadn’t noticed all this before. but this thing looked large and vi-
took me shopping for clothes. Just She brought items up to me as if cious—it was a raccoon. It reached
us girls, she said. Skirts and blouses, they were dead animals, holding them out at the dark between us, at my lit-
dresses, trousers, a trench coat. These with two fingers as she shaped her face tle face, and when I flinched it stopped
were things I never would have dared into disgust. She brought me takeout and turned back to where it had come
to buy for myself. They were in fab- boxes and containers,beer bottles,soiled from. I don’t know what it thought I
ric you had to dry-clean. You couldn’t clothes, ashtrays.Then she threw a toi- was, exactly, what it might have mis-
throw any of those clothes into a ma- let brush my way and said, “Start with taken me for, out there, all alone. I
chine to launder. She was so wonder- this.” I hadn’t noticed the stains on the wasn’t trash. 
ful to me, really. No one had ever taken outside of the toilet bowl, or inside just
that kind of time with me or cared around the rim. I didn’t know things NEWYORKER.COM
so much for me. I was always afraid could get into those kinds of places, at
of troubling the salesgirls at stores that angle. Souvankham Thammavongsa on centering a
She talked about her son as if she narrator who would usually be in the margins.
had been married to him for twenty-

60 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

Browse the store.

THE CRITICS

A CRITIC AT LARGE

PUPPET REGIME

The further and further and further adventures of Pinocchio.

BY JOAN ACOCELLA

O f the half-dozen or so films seems to be alive, but he stares straight the room’s brazier. He then falls asleep, ABOVE: CHRISTOPH NIEMANN
that turned Walt Disney,in the ahead, expressionless. At first glance, he and as a result his feet are burned off.
public’s mind, from the father looks almost serene. Then you inspect When Geppetto returns home, he
of Mickey Mouse to the creator of the the drawing more closely and realize bursts into tears and lifts the puppet
animated fairy-tale feature—thereby that the reason his face is blank is that to his breast. Pinocchio hangs on for
making his work a fixture in the imag- he is numb with fear, like someone in dear life. He can no longer stand up.
inative life of almost every American a horror movie. Danger and death sur- His legs are smoking stumps.The draw-
child—“Pinocchio”(1940) feels like the round this small creature throughout ing of this scene (by the excellent En-
odd one out. Many people say it is their the film. As Allan points out, seventy- rico Mazzanti) in the novel’s first edi-
least favorite.It is surely the most fright- six of “Pinocchio”’s eighty-eight min- tion is hard to look at.
ening.Go to anyone you know who was utes—that’s eighty-six per cent—take
in grammar school in the nineteen- place at night or under water. Geppetto, in creating Pinocchio,
forties and fifties and ask, What was hopes that the puppet will perform in
the Disney movie that scared you the If the film is unsettling, consider the public to support him in his old age, for
most? Was it “Snow White and the novel it was based on, Carlo Collodi’s he is very poor. But when Pinocchio,
Seven Dwarfs” (1937), where the evil “Adventures of Pinocchio” (1883). The not long after his creation, is on his way
queen falls off a cliff to her death? tale begins with a lethal weapon: under to school, he discovers that a puppet
(Dr. Benjamin Spock once wrote that blows from an axe, the pine log that will show has come to town, which sounds
all the seats in the vast auditorium of become Pinocchio cries out, “Ouch! like more fun. He cannot resist temp-
Radio City Music Hall had to be re- you’ve hurt me!” Soon afterward, the tation; he lacks a conscience. As veter-
upholstered because so many children woodworker Geppetto starts fashion- ans of the Disney version know,his con-
wet their pants while watching the film.) ing the log into a puppet, which he calls science is outsourced to the figure of
Well,what about “Dumbo”(1941),where Pinocchio: pino,in Italian,meaning pine, Jiminy Cricket.But in the Collodi novel
the baby elephant has to watch as his and occhio, meaning eye, one of the first Pinocchio kills the wise Cricket—
mother is whipped and chained, howl- parts of Pinocchio that Geppetto lib- throws a mallet at him, mashing his
ing for her child? O.K., what about erates from within the log. Next comes guts against the wall—when the crea-
“Bambi”(1942),where the fawn’s mother the nose, which, the moment Geppetto ture tells him that he should go to school.
is shot to death a few feet away from has finished it,starts to grow to an enor- Pinocchio pays for his truancy. After
him? You can’t beat that, can you? mous length. Geppetto tries to prune the puppet show, he encounters two
it back,“but the more he cut and short- scoundrels, the Fox and the Cat, who
But, for some reason, “Pinocchio” ened it, the longer that impudent nose conspire to steal his money and hang
does. Perhaps the answer lies not in any became.”This nose will become Pinoc- him by the neck from an oak tree.
one scene but in the movie’s over-all chio’s trademark feature, and the com-
bleakness. Robin Allan, in his beauti- bined comedy and cruelty that attend The film’s dark side reflects some of
ful book “Walt Disney and Europe” its birth can be said to stand for Col- the book’s outlandish cruelty,but in many
(1999), reproduces what he calls an lodi’s novel as a whole: Geppetto got other ways Disney transformed the orig-
“atmosphere sketch” for “Pinocchio,” Pinocchio by cutting, and for most of inal. For instance, Pinocchio’s desire to
by the Disney artist Gustaf Tenggren, the remainder of the tale Pinocchio cuts be a “real boy,” so central to the film,
showing the puppet locked in a cage, him—mocks him, runs away from him. emerges only fitfully in the book. The
just after he has been kidnapped by an same is true of his nose’s habit of grow-
itinerant puppeteer. Other marionettes It’s not an even trade, though. Pi- ing when he tells a lie, a trait so famous
hang from the ceiling on strings, as if nocchio, for all his naughtiness, suffers that it’s now part of our culture’s ico-
they had been lynched. Pinocchio alone terribly. Early on, at home alone, he lies nography. (There’s a long-nosed emoji
back in a chair,propping his feet against for lying, and the Washington Post’s

62 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

The Pinocchio story that most people know is very different from the one that Carlo Collodi originally wrote.

ILLUSTRATION BY IRENE RINALDI THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 63

“Here’s an idea—paint about gathering.” at a respected bookstore in Florence and
began to mix with the intelligentsia. In
•• his mid-twenties, he co-founded a sa-
tirical daily. In the following decades, he
fact checker logs the mendacity of pol- ished book. Since then, Pinocchio has reviewed books, music, and theatre, and
iticians’ speeches on a scale of “two Pi- continually refused to be tied down, produced a lot of political polemics. He
nocchios,” “three Pinocchios,” and so roaming freely across the world’s visual also wrote a novel and six comic plays.
on.) Collodi’s Pinocchio certainly tells culture, always different but always In other words, he became the sort of
a lot of lies, but his nose often grows recognizably himself. literary Jack-of-all-trades that histori-
when he hasn’t lied, and he often lies ans are apt to call a “journalist.” He was
without his nose growing. Carlo Collodi (1826-90) was the el- also usually holding down a day job in
dest of ten children born to a cou- the civil service. The fact that he never
“Seldom has a work of literature been ple—the father a cook, the mother a married or had children—he is said to
so overshadowed by its celluloid adap- seamstress—working in the service of have disliked children—no doubt made
tation,”John Hooper and Anna Kraczyna a Florentine marquess named Ginori it easier for him to do all this.
write in the introduction to their new Lisci. The growing brood was appar-
translation of “The Adventures of Pi- ently too much for them, and the boy Collodi was a committed republi-
nocchio” (Penguin Classics). “This is a lived for a time with his mother’s fam- can. Twice, in 1848 and then in 1859, he
book with a mission: to rescue Pinoc- ily in the village of Collodi,outside Flor- signed up to fight for the Risorgimento,
chio,” they declare.They want us to see ence. (It was from that town that, when the movement that sought to liberate
Collodi’s work not just as a children’s he was grown, he took his pen name. the Italian peninsula from the foreign
story but also, maybe primarily, as a part His given name was Carlo Lorenzini.) powers that, for most of his lifetime,
of “the corpus of nineteenth-century His parents’ employer took an interest ruled it. Like many radicals, however,
novels of social denunciation,”and they in him, however, and arranged for him Collodi was not happy with the out-
urge us to recognize its puppet hero as to get an education. Carlo first went to come of the Risorgimento: a constitu-
being, for Italy, what Don Quixote is a seminary, in preparation for a career tional monarchy with a weak king,Vic-
for Spain, “one of those rare fictional in the Church. Then, deciding that he tor Emmanuel II,who cared more about
characters in whom an entire people did not have the makings of a priest, he the rich and the middle class than about
seem to be able to make out their re- transferred to another good school. At Italy’s millions of poor people. Even
flection.” But you don’t have to be an this time, when much of Italy was im- though the nation was now nominally
Italian to identify with Pinocchio. For poverished and illiterate, it was rare for ruled by a central government, its many
many audiences worldwide, he is the someone of Collodi’s social position,the parts did not have shared values,or even
spirit of disobedience. No sooner is he child of servants, to receive a classical a shared language. In his forties, Col-
born than he establishes his indepen- education, and it was this mixed back- lodi contributed to an important Ital-
dence from his creator, Geppetto. Not ground, both sophisticated and “street,” ian dictionary, one of the many efforts
long after that, he also, in a sense, parts that makes “Pinocchio” so piquant. to get Italians to agree on a single stan-
ways with Collodi, whose original con- dard language rather than continue
ception was very different from the fin- In his late teens,Collodi went to work speaking local dialects that people fifty
miles away might not understand. As
reformers sized up the task of educat-
ing the populace of this new country,
Collodi started writing for children.
First, he did a translation of Charles
Perrault’s fairy tales and a number of
instructional storybooks.Then, in 1880,
a publisher in Rome persuaded him to
contribute to a fledgling newspaper for
children, Giornale per i Bambini, and he
launched what was to be that publica-
tion’s best-known serial, “La Storia di
un Burattino,” or “The Story of a Pup-
pet,” the puppet being Pinocchio.

It has been suggested that Pinoc-
chio, his newly fashioned parts flapping
this way and that, was Collodi’s sym-
bol of his homeland—nominally uni-
fied but in fact governed locally, not by
agreed-upon, let alone just, laws. The
book features not a single public offi-
cial—policeman, jailer, judge—who is

64 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

not either stupid or corrupt or both. An interesting corollary of serial pub- thor to continue the story he thought
When Pinocchio complains to the au- lication was that it occasionally gave he had got rid of. Pinocchio refused to
thorities that the Fox and the Cat have readers a say in how the narrative would die, and that is how we ended up with
stolen his money, the police come and develop. A famous example is that of the story we have today.
arrest not the Fox and the Cat but Pi- the Sherlock Holmes novels and sto-
nocchio.The judge (a gorilla) sends Pi- ries, by Arthur Conan Doyle, the first Under the circumstances,it is tempt-
nocchio to prison for having been such of which appeared in 1887. Once the ing to assume that Part 2 of “Pi-
a fool. An amnesty is later declared in stories started running in The Strand nocchio” is a reversal, a correction, of
the district, but Pinocchio is told that magazine, in 1891, they became so pop- Part 1.The ending of Part 2,which shows
he alone will not be released, because ular that Conan Doyle had difficulty us Pinocchio as a well-dressed and rather
an amnesty is only for real criminals. keeping up with the public demand. As arch young man—no longer a puppet—
Tuscans have a reputation for being a result, he became very rich, and very makes us even more likely to tell our-
rough and gruff, and Collodi—habitu- sick of Sherlock Holmes. In 1893, after selves that that’s what the book’s sec-
ally wry, sardonic, iconoclastic—was an six years on this project, he set out to ond half is about. It’s not, though, or
excellent representative of his province. eliminate his celebrated detective by not until close to the end.Most of Part 2,
It is no surprise that he did not send having him fall into the thundering like Part 1,is a pretty rough-and-tumble
his hero off into a world of kindness. Reichenbach Falls, in Switzerland, in a affair, and that truculence is probably
death struggle with the criminal mas- what children, and their parents, liked
The stories appeared, off and on, termind Professor Moriarty.This might so much in “Pinocchio.” It was part of
during the second half of 1881.Taken have seemed a good ending for the se- their inheritance from the commedia
together, they form less than half the ries (Moriarty perished, too), but that dell’arte and from the puppet shows,
book we now call “Pinocchio”—fifteen was not the view of the English read- descendants of the commedia, that in
chapters out of thirty-six. This section ing public. Twenty thousand people late-nineteenth-century Italy still trav-
ends when the Fox and the Cat hang cancelled their subscriptions to The elled from town to town. It is just such
Pinocchio: Strand in protest. Conan Doyle, no a show,with puppets trading insults and
doubt flattered but also annoyed, re- clobbering one another over the head,
A strong north wind had come up, which, sisted the pressure for a decade and then that Pinocchio is enthralled by early on
blowing and howling furiously, slammed the gave in. Papering over Holmes’s sup- in the story.
poor hanged puppet back and forth, causing posed death, Conan Doyle had the de-
him to swing violently like the clapper of a joy- tective reveal that he had hidden on a Scenes of cheerful brutality were fa-
ously ringing bell. And that swinging caused ledge in order to fake his own death miliar to Collodi and his contemporar-
him the sharpest spasms while the slip noose, and evade his enemies, thus allowing ies also from other nineteenth-century
tightening more and more around his throat, the series to resume. children’s literature: illustrated stories,
was choking him. sometimes newspaper cartoons,in which
Much the same thing, on a smaller badly behaved children had popguns
Little by little his eyes grew dim; and al- scale,happened with Carlo Collodi.The rammed down their throats (we see the
though he felt death approaching, he none- Pinocchio stories were an immediate blood,the broken teeth) or were thrown
theless still continued to hope that at any mo- hit, but then Collodi got tired of doing down the chimney into a bubbling soup
ment some compassionate soul would pass by them and decided to kill his hero off. pot. If they sucked their thumbs, their
and help him. But when, after waiting and In the Giornale’s printing of the hang- thumbs were cut off. (Wilhelm Busch’s
waiting, he saw that nobody showed up, abso- “Max and Moritz,” first put between
lutely nobody, then he remembered his poor ing passage quoted above, the phrase covers in 1865, is probably the best-
father again . . . and almost at death’s door, “almost at death’s door” does not ap- known example.)
he stuttered. pear. “Almost at death’s door,” which
was added for the book version, means In addition to the cartoonish vio-
“Oh, dear father! . . . if only you were here!” not quite yet at death’s door. Clearly, lence, another quality that unites the
And he had no breath to say anything else. Collodi, moved by the reactions of out- two parts of “Pinocchio” is a long vein
He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, stretched raged readers and also, perhaps, by a of sheer strangeness—alluring, bizarre,
out his legs, and, after giving a great shud- need for money, decided to re-start the and often beautiful strangeness, like
der, he remained there as though frozen stiff. serial. Like Sherlock Holmes’s conve- something out of Surrealist art.In Chap-
nient ledge, this phrase enabled the au- ter 15,Pinocchio meets the Blue-Haired
That,the earliest fans of the stories must Fairy, who will become a sort of guard-
have thought,was the end of Pinocchio. ian angel to him. Running away from
the Fox and the Cat, he spies a little
It wasn’t. A great deal of nineteenth- cottage in the distance.Maybe,he thinks,
century fiction was published serially, someone in there could save him? He
in magazines and newspapers. This runs to the cottage and bangs on the
was especially common with what, door. No answer.
today, we would call popular novels,
about who would marry whom or mur- Then there came to the window a beauti-
der whom, and also with children’s lit- ful Little Girl with blue hair and a face as white
erature. Such subcategories were prod- as a wax image who, with eyes closed and hands
ucts of the great nineteenth-century
boom in literacy, and like many new
things they were treated more lightly
than old things were.

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 65

crossed over her breast, without moving her First, they feel something funny on of the wooden marionette reflected there;
lips at all, said in a voice that seemed to come their heads and find, with horror, that instead he saw the lively, intelligent
from the world beyond: they have grown long, hairy asses’ ears. image of a handsome boy with chest-
They try to laugh this off,but the laugh- nut brown hair and light blue eyes, and
“There is nobody in this house. They are ter turns to braying. They run around with a festive air about him that made
all dead.” on all fours and sprout hooves and a him seem as happy as a holiday.” Re-
tail. Like Midas or Narcissus, the two ally? After having, shortly before, found
“Well, then you at least open up for me!” boys have been transformed into an himself, and Geppetto, in danger of
cried Pinocchio, weeping and imploring. image of their moral lives. being digested by a shark,in whose cold,
slimy innards they were entrapped?
“I am dead, too.” Unbelievably, things get worse. The
“Dead? But then what are you doing there donkey Pinocchio, having been pur- Many a chapter is only a few pages
at the window?” chased by a man who is apparently a long, and whatever happens in it may
“I am waiting for the bier to come and take leather-goods merchant, is thrown into well be forgotten by the next chapter.
me away.” the ocean with a stone tied to his neck, In one, Pinocchio encounters a slaver-
As soon as she said this, the Little Girl dis- so that he will drown and his hide alone ing mastiff; in another, he is menaced
appeared, and the window closed again with- can be harvested. But, as he is dumped by a snake; in another, he converses
out making a sound. into the sea, a school of fish, sent by the with a parrot sitting in a tree. Never
Blue-Haired Fairy, who can’t bear to mind. In a few pages, he/she/it will be
After that,nothing in this book needs see him suffer, attach themselves to his gone, often never to be heard from
to go very far to seem strange,but things body and devour all his flesh—hide,tail, again. That, not just the tale’s fidelity
do go farther. The Little Girl starts to guts—slimming him down to the to national characteristics, is why “Pi-
feel sorry for Pinocchio, and after see- wooden puppet he once was.This is not nocchio” is often compared to “Don
ing him hanged she dispatches her the only horrible scene at the end of Quixote.”It is a picaresque.It goes from
neighborhood falcon to sever the rope “Pinocchio,” but, brief and blunt, it is episode to episode.
around his neck and bring him back to the most appalling.They are only a don-
her house. There she installs him in a key and a school of fish, but it some- The reader’s problem, though, is not
big fluffy bed and calls in three medi- how feels like cannibalism. with the change of circumstances—this
cal specialists: the Owl, the Raven, and is a fairy tale, after all—but with the
the so-called Talking Cricket,who turns All along,the story has been devolv- change of tone. Before, Pinocchio was
out to be the ghost of the cricket that ing in another sense.That is, it has always childlike: eager, curious, won-
Pinocchio murdered earlier. Each of been turning into a mess. Arguably, it dering,blundering.Now he is as smooth
them delivers a pompous speech diag- has been doing so from the beginning. and confident, as full of fake cheer as
nosing Pinocchio’s ailment, and each For instance, Pinocchio started off with a housewife in a floor-wax commercial.
diagnosis differs from the others. Hav- a completely different wood-carver, “How funny I was when I was a pup-
ing done their duty, the doctors depart, Master Cherry, who botched the job pet!” he exclaims. “How glad I am now
whereupon the Fairy—it is roughly at and handed the log over to Geppetto. that I’ve become a proper boy!” We
this point that the Little Girl, without He then disappeared from the tale,never liked him better the other way, and so,
explanation, turns into a full-fledged to be seen again. Other perplexities ac- I am sure,did Collodi.Nicolas J.Perella,
fairy—mixes a medicine for Pinocchio. cumulate. We start hearing about peo- whose 1986 translation (in a bilingual,
When he refuses to drink it, “the door ple who need to be explained and aren’t. annotated edition) remains the best,
of the room opened wide and in came Things are supposed to happen, and says in his introduction that Collodi
four rabbits as black as ink, carrying a then they don’t. Things are deplored, told a friend that he could not remem-
small coffin on their shoulders.” Is this and we’re not told why. Pinocchio’s sav- ber having written this ending, even
the bier the Little Girl was waiting for, ior, the Blue-Haired Fairy, appears first though the manuscript shows that he
to remove her corpse and the other as a little girl, at a window. Within a did. Perhaps he was ashamed? Maybe
dead bodies she claimed were in her short time, she is a beautiful grownup he was drunk when he wrote it?
house? We never find out. All we are fairy. Sometimes she’s dead, sometimes
told is that Pinocchio, frightened out alive.At one point,she turns into a goat, According to Tim Parks, a longtime
of his wits that he, too, may die and be but not for long. translator and critic of Italian literature,
carried off by the rabbit pallbearers, Collodi was an enthusiastic drinker,
drinks down the Fairy’s potion and soon But the most surprising inconsis- gambler, and womanizer. He was also
feels better. tency—many readers, I think, just try legendarily lazy and hated to revise.The
to forget about it—comes at the end. final trait, I think, is the most impor-
One of the main dramas that oc- Here Pinocchio has at last, with the tant. Many of the chapters seem as
cupy the second portion of the book is help of the Blue-Haired Fairy, become though they were written in the last
a trip to the Land of Toys, a place for a “real boy,” the thing he is said to have half hour before they were due at the
boys who like to play children’s games— wished for from the beginning. (In fact, printer. At times, Collodi sounds like
or, in the Disney movie, to smoke ci- we don’t hear about this wish until Chap- an oral poet, even a rapper, making it
gars and play pool—rather than go to ter 25.) He looks at himself in the mir- up as he goes along. You can hear his
school. Pinocchio is persuaded to go ror: “He no longer saw the usual image breath, feel his energy rising and fall-
there with a bunch of local juvenile de- ing.A shark? Bring it on! Master Cherry,
linquents. He and his friend Lampwick
throw themselves into the pleasures of-
fered and, as a result, turn into donkeys.

66 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

forgotten? Who cares! Jump from the BRIEFLY NOTED
luckless Pinocchio to the “real boy,”
happy as a holiday? Why not? The au- The Shores of Bohemia, by JohnTaylor Williams (Farrar,Straus &
dience was a bunch of kids. Were they Giroux). From roughly 1910 to 1960, Cape Cod was a yeasty
going to notice? outpost for lefty artists and intellectuals—“Greenwich Village
sunburnt,”as the editor Floyd Dell said of Provincetown. Mary
Whatever the book’s carelessness, it McCarthy lived and set her barbed novel “A Charmed Life”
was fantastically popular, and not just on the Cape. Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams felt able
in Italy. According to the editors of the to do their best work there. Robert Motherwell wrote of “the
new edition, “Pinocchio” is the second radiant summer light of Provincetown that rivals the Greek is-
most frequently translated work of fic- lands.”In this admiring chronicle, the author shows how, across
tion in the world. (The first is Saint- half a century of tippling, rabble-rousing, and bed-hopping on
Exupéry’s “The Little Prince.”) In the the Cape, “a movement that shaped American art, literature,
United States, its popularity spawned a design, and theater rose and fell like the tides on its shores.”
variety of adaptations, some more mor-
alistic, some more sentimental, and so Stepping Back from the Ledge, by Laura Trujillo (Random
on. In “Pinocchio Goes Postmodern,” House). The author of this memoir reckons with her moth-
a lively account of the puppet’s fortunes er’s suicide, a decade ago in Grand Canyon National Park,
in America, two “Pinocchio” savants, and with the agonizing conviction that she was to blame for
Richard Wunderlich and Thomas Mor- it. Not long before, Trujillo had told her mother that her
rissey, track these versions and show stepfather had sexually abused her for years. In unvarnished
how they fed into the Disney movie prose, she conjures the despair that gripped her in the after-
and thereby ended up occluding the math of the death: “My grandma blamed me, as did my
original. I have conducted an informal mom’s sister and her brother.” Later, Trujillo, a journalist,
poll of Americans I know who are in- uses park-service reports to reconstruct a time line of her
terested in children’s literature,and none mother’s final journey. Hoping thereby to understand her
of them came to Collodi’s book until mother’s decision, she instead confronts how, in cases of sui-
they had seen the Disney movie. The cide, “only one person ‘gets’ an ending; the rest of us are left
same is true of me. with a story abandoned mid-sentence.”

At Disney, the project was seen as a Time Shelter, by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from the Bul-
problem almost from the start.Walt garian by Angela Rodel (Liveright). In this antic fantasy of
Disney was worried that Collodi’s Pi- European politics, narrated by a fictionalized version of the
nocchio was not sufficiently admirable author, an enigmatic friend of his designs “a clinic of the
to be the hero of a movie made by his past,”which soothes Alzheimer’s patients with environments
company.Indeed,at a certain point early from a time they can still remember. As the treatment gains
in production, he called a halt to work prominence, feverish nostalgia grips the continent. People
on the film, so that his writers could dress up in national costumes, and there is a Brexit-style ref-
make changes in the story. (Many of the erendum to return to the past (though the countries disagree
artists involved moved over to work on on the era). In the East, there are socialist rallies and even a
“Fantasia,”which was being made at the re-assassination of Franz Ferdinand. “History is still news,”
same time.) But, once Disney felt that Gospodinov writes, cunningly drawing attention to the vi-
the film had found its feet,he proceeded olence that the past wreaks on the present.
confidently.Always a high roller,he filled
the movie with dazzlements. Especially Acts of Service, by Lillian Fishman (Hogarth). Having a de-
amazing was the work of a new, multi- voted, dependable girlfriend doesn’t stop Eve, the narrator of
plane camera,developed by Disney tech- this début novel, from posting nude selfies online or from be-
nicians,that could shoot from three,five, coming involved with a couple, Olivia and Nathan, who re-
twelve distances simultaneously: the vil- spond to the pictures. Olivia is a painter with a day job at a
lage awakening, the birds circling the family investment firm, where Nathan is her boss. Eve finds
church tower, the chef fetching loaves herself intoxicated by Nathan’s masculinity, which draws her
of bread, the children leaving for school. into “a state of grotesque candor,”even as she frets over Olivia’s
Even today, when the film is more than well-being and struggles to reconcile her ideas of gender pol-
eighty years old—and we have seen con- itics with the discovery of pleasure and abandon. Her adven-
siderable cinematic wizardry in the ture,she realizes,presents all the issues that preoccupy her—“de-
meantime—these shots take your breath sire, sex, gender, attention, intimacy, vanity, and power”—in
away. Anyone who wants a jolt of pa- such a way that she can “study them like fruit in a bowl.”
triotic pride should watch “Ponyo”(2008),
by Studio Ghibli, Japan’s famed ani-
mation studio, and note how much its

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 67

artists, in drawing that movie’s tsunami, Haired Fairy! An American TV movie way that was visceral, physical, almost
apparently learned from the violent sea from 2000 featured Julia Louis- painful. And then—again, this hurt,
storm set in motion by the whale (Dis- Dreyfus as the Fairy. In 1971, there physically—woodpeckers came and
ney’s upgrade of Collodi’s shark) when was a pornographic offering, “The landed on his nose and pecked it back
he discovers that, contrary to his expec- Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio,” re- to normal length. And the whole time,
tation, Pinocchio and Geppetto are not portedly a cult classic. Some people the small Ielapi rode the razor’s edge
going to be his dinner. say that Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.,”from between human and wooden.Touch-
2001, is effectively “Pinocchio,” too. ingly, Garrone cast Roberto Benigni
At the same time, a lot of sophisti- The following year saw another live- as an age-appropriate Geppetto, and
cated people noticed that Disney had action version, this one directed by Benigni was as good as a doting fa-
moved “Pinocchio”from poor, dusty old Roberto Benigni, Italy’s beloved ther as he had been bad as a naughty
Italy to a clean,sparkling place that looks clown, who also played Pinocchio. puppet. Ielapi told interviewers how
like Tyrol—Pinocchio wears a little al- Benigni stressed fantasy. Thanks to much he liked working with Benigni.
pine hat with a feather—and that Gep- C.G.I., the carriage in the opening Every day on the set, he reported, Be-
petto’s workshop, a small, bare hovel in shot was drawn by what looked like nigni showed him tricks and dreamed
the Collodi original, had undergone a five hundred white rats. That wasn’t up ways to keep him entertained.
makeover. Now it was a large, prosper- the only special effect.The film is said
ous studio filled with wonderful cuckoo to have been the most expensive ever Thanks to COVID-19, there is more
clocks on which, every hour, cunningly made in Italy. But the whole opera- than one new “Pinocchio” sitting on
carved figures—a mother, a drunk, a tion was scuttled by Benigni’s near- the shelf. The Disney Company has
barnyard fowl—come out the doors and hysterical idea of comic acting, which made a live-action-plus-C.G.I. ver-
enact little dramas. involves his jerking and gesticulating sion of its famous cartoon, just as it
and hopping around as if someone did with “Beauty and the Beast.” Rob-
Plenty of moviegoers adored the had set his feet on fire. This movie ert Zemeckis (“Back to the Future”)
clocks, but some people began to com- received some of the worst reviews in directed, with a stellar cast including
plain about the movie’s embourgeoise- the history of film criticism. Keegan-Michael Key, Barack Obama’s
ment, or Disneyfication, to use a word anger manager, as the Fox, and the
from the following decade.Foremost on That doesn’t seem to have discour- gravel-voiced Lorraine Bracco as Sofia
the list of grievances was a change to aged anybody. In 2019, we got the the Seagull, a character who isn’t in
the hero. No longer was Pinocchio the “Pinocchio” of Matteo Garrone, who the original story but has been writ-
skinny, weird-looking thing with the is known for his unflinching neo- ten in apparently just so that Zemeckis
pointy hat whom you can see in the neo-realist films—above all,“Gomor- could use Bracco. Speaking of which,
early illustrated editions of Collodi’s text. rah,” about the Neapolitan Mafia— Zemeckis’s Geppetto is Tom Hanks,
Now he was a fat-cheeked little guy who but who has also made some thrilling America’s dad. Another “Pinocchio”
talked like Shirley Temple and never fairy-tale films. His live-action “Pi- that is finally on its way is a stop-
meant to do anybody wrong. Most im- nocchio” comes from the latter de- motion animated musical by the wild-
portant,he did not turn into the self-sat- partment of his brain. He told the minded Mexican director Guillermo
isfied “real boy” that Collodi produced press that he first story-boarded “Pi- del Toro. Like Garrone, del Toro has
at the end of his book. He just turned nocchio” at age six. His film solves said that the story captivated him as
into a cute kindergartener almost iden- the problem, unavoidable in live- a child.There have been rumors of yet
tical to the cute puppet he had been be- action versions, of how to present a another version in the works, directed
fore, but with flesh, rather than dowels, hero who is half human and half fab- by Ron Howard and starring Robert
holding his legs together. In time, the rication.The makers of the 1931 “Fran- Downey, Jr.
anti-Disney chorus expanded, but more kenstein” faced the same difficulty,
in the ranks of folklorists than among but they had Boris Karloff, a veteran Imagine! Three more “Pinocchio”s!
film historians. Some fairy-tale schol- actor, whereas Garrone, in casting his One wonders why a skinny, rebarba-
ars still see Disney as a kind of public Pinocchio, chose a child, Federico tive marionette should be getting so
menace—the Marxist critic Jack Zipes Ielapi, who, though he’d had some much attention. But I have been told
has written that Disney treats fairy tales TV experience, was only eight years by film historians that the classic end-
the way that the abusive parents in fairy old. Ielapi was professional enough, ing of a movie is the making or remak-
tales treat children—but many of to- however, to endure the daily three- ing of a family. Actually, it needn’t be
day’s film writers seem to regard the hour makeup sessions required to a movie. A lot of Shakespeare’s plays
sentimentality and relentless uplift of make him a cross between a boy and fit that formula,as do many nineteenth-
the Disney films as simply part of the a piece of wood. (Again, think Sur- and early-twentieth-century novels.
past: dated, but not the enemy of truth. realism.) And he mastered what pre- Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Huck
sumably was Garrone’s idea: a face Finn, Ántonia Shimerda—their fam-
The influence of the Disney film that is normally expressionless but ilies start off badly broken. Dead fa-
can be seen in the dozens of Pi- with semi-legible feelings just detect- thers, dead mothers, no house, no din-
nocchio versions that have followed. able under the wood. When his Pi- ner. Fiction, with a different kind of
In 1972, there was an Italian miniseries nocchio lied, his nose grew, but in a love story, comes in to heal life’s wound,
with Gina Lollobrigida as the Blue- or tries. 

68 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

BOOKS portrayal of lives devoted to pleasure
that Holleran has sometimes been
A MATTER OF TIME charged with glorifying hedonism, or
with suggesting that the world he writes
Andrew Holleran chronicles life after catastrophe. about is the only one possible for gay
men. In fact, the novel is clear from the
BY GARTH GREENWELL start that its subject is “that tiny sub-
species of homosexual, the doomed
queen, who puts the car in gear and
drives right off the cliff!”

“Dancer” is beloved not only for the
beauty of its sentences but for the bril-
liance of one of its central characters.
Andrew Sutherland, an erudite, speed-
addicted, endlessly lovable Wildean
queen, who teaches the book’s protago-
nist the ins and outs of queer life, counts
among the glories of postwar American
fiction. In a novel characterized by twilit
languor and ambered nostalgia—Holle-
ran’s clearest influences are Fitzgerald
and Proust—Sutherland blazes in hilar-
ious scenes that have remained etched
in my memory since I first read the book,
as an adolescent. In one, Sutherland in-
terrupts his reading of St.Teresa to lean
out a window and impersonate an Ital-
ian prostitute; in another, he halts a gay
man’s maudlin monologue with what
still seems to me an excellent remedy for
homosexual self-loathing: “For heaven’s
sake, don’t take it so seriously! Just re-
peat after me: ‘My face seats five, my
honeypot’s on fire.’”

Holleran’s novels, always full of exposition, have become increasingly essayistic. AIDS put an end to the world that
the books chronicled. Kramer met
In 1978, two novels appeared that cov- where a fire killed nine men in 1977. the occasion with extraordinary energy:
ered remarkably similar, and largely Both novels are, finally, morality tales, he helped to found Gay Men’s Health
unexplored, territory, documenting the critiquing a life style that they see as Crisis and ACT UP, and his play “The
drug-addled,sex-crazed circuit of bath- empty, immature, dangerous, doomed; Normal Heart,” first staged in 1985, is
houses, dance clubs, and parties that, in both would later be hailed as prescient one of the era’s enduring works. Holle-
the seventies,shuttled gay men between from the perspective of communities ran, by his own account, was enervated,
Manhattan and Fire Island, with occa- ravaged by AIDS. even paralyzed, and came to question
sional forays to San Francisco or the the value of art in the face of overwhelm-
more exotic wilds of Brooklyn and And yet the experience of reading ing tragedy. His second novel, “Nights
Queens. In both books, men searching the books could hardly be more differ- in Aruba,”appeared in 1983, as the scope
for love settle for ever more elaborate ent.Larry Kramer’s “Faggots”is a manic of the epidemic was just becoming clear,
sexual scenes—floggings, fistings, cru- picaresque, radiating disgust in sen- and it refers to AIDS only glancingly; an-
cifixions—and,in both,men throw away tences that are as crazy with jitters as other thirteen years passed before he
their lives: diving from heights on angel any of the strung-out queens he depicts. published his third. His literary efforts
dust, sniffing poppers at the bottom of Andrew Holleran’s “Dancer from the in the eighties were directed toward es-
swimming pools, leaping, “like roaches Dance,” by contrast, is bathed in mel- says for the gay magazine Christopher
falling from a hot oven,” out of upper- ancholy gorgeousness, as attuned as any Street; they form a real-time account of
floor windows at the Everard Baths, of its characters to “the animal bliss of the early AIDS crisis. A selection of these
being alive.” The book is so vivid in its pieces, gathered in the 1988 volume
“Ground Zero,” is one of the most im-
portant books to emerge from the plague.

AIDS wasn’t the only catastrophe that

ILLUSTRATION BY DEREK ABELLA THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 69

Holleran confronted. Also in 1983, when stances of mild, commonplace, devastat- Holleran’s novels have become in-
he was thirty-nine,his mother broke her ing abuse. And yet he recognizes her, creasingly essayistic over time. Along
neck in a fall and became a quadriple- even in this early novel, as “the last faith- with “Dancer,” “Grief ” is his most ton-
gic. “At times he has to remind himself, ful love I would have.” ally and emotionally unified work,its tu-
She fell, I didn’t,” Holleran would write telary spirit not Fitzgerald but the Ger-
in “The Beauty of Men,”his third novel. His faithfulness never falters. The man novelist W. G. Sebald. The novel’s
“But it doesn’t matter. She fell on him.” most moving passages of “The Beauty peripatetic narrator spends a semester
He cared for her for more than a de- of Men” take place when Lark visits his teaching in Washington, D.C., floating
cade, living in his parents’ home, in a mother in her nursing home.“You’ll never through days blurred by sadness, mus-
small town in northern Florida; his grow- leave me.Your conscience won’t let you,” ing on the history of the city. Like the
ing alienation from New she tells him, a line that first appears in narrator of Sebald’s “The Rings of Sat-
York City on return visits is urn,” he counterpoints his own experi-
a theme of “Ground Zero.” “Beauty” and returns, in ence with that of historical figures, in-
Holleran, who never came memory, in “The Kingdom corporating long quotations from the
out to his parents, kept his of Sand.”They watch “Mur- letters of another inveterate mourner,
family life and his gay life der, She Wrote” and “Jeop- Mary Todd Lincoln. The result is one
separate.(Andrew Holleran ardy!” together; he pushes of the most powerful studies of grief and
is a pen name, taken to pro- her wheelchair around the isolation that I know.
tect his family; his real name facility, or to a nearby mall.
is Eric Garber.) The bifur- “He feels like Jesus, raising “The Kingdom of Sand” is divided
cation of his life, and the Lazarus from the dead,” into five sections, several of which an-
experience of “two parallel Holleran writes.“It is worth nounce their subjects in their titles.“The
disasters occurring in the separate com- everything else . . . that sin- Endless Cantaloupe”is about the eating
partments,” is the primary preoccupa- gle, brief moment when he patterns of the narrator’s parents as they
tion of his fiction after “Dancer.” first swims into her vision and she awak- grew old, and his own attempts to fore-
ens like a flower in some speeded-up stall death through neurotically fastidi-
That début remains uniquely novel- film, blossoming before his very eyes.” ous habits. (“I rarely ate for pleasure, I
istic among Holleran’s works. His sub- ate because broccoli had indoles that
sequent books, from “Nights in Aruba” Time, as much as language, is the were thought to deter cancer.”)The book’s
to his new novel,“The Kingdom of Sand,” novelist’s medium, and among the title section details his family’s relation-
can most profitably be read as a sustained most fundamental decisions a novelist ship with the small town where he lives:
study of one man’s life.Though the pro- makes is how it should move. Holleran from his parents’ decision to retire there
tagonists are sometimes granted differ- is unusual in his desire, more common to his own situation as an aging single
ent names—Paul in “Nights in Aruba,” with lyric poets, that time not move at man, inhabiting streets that are as full of
Lark in“The Beauty of Men”—and minor all.This creates problems for plot, which ghosts—his parents, their friends and
differences of circumstance, the major he has acknowledged as a challenge.“So neighbors—as New York during the early
facts of their biographies are largely con- much of life is plotless,”he has said,“that AIDS crisis.Throughout the book, para-
stant, and shared with their author: a de- I would never want to create a plot that graphs open with what feel like topic
vout Catholic childhood on a Caribbean was not, I felt, realistic.” sentences: “Roads are to Florida what
island; military service and initiation into syringes are to veins”; “Lightning in the
gay life in Heidelberg; young adulthood Holleran’s most successful novels take seventies, it seems to me, was more dra-
in New York, where the thrill of sexual a particular period—six indistinguish- matic than it is today.”
freedom competed with anxiety about able years in “Dancer,” a semester in his
possibly wasting one’s life; then a mostly 2006 novel, “Grief ”—and bottle it, tilt- The book’s longest section, “Hurri-
closeted small-town existence, caring for ing it this way and that,letting time drift cane Weather,” recounts the narrator’s
a disabled parent,and crushing grief after and double back. In a novel, exposition relationship with Earl, his only friend in
that parent’s death.Incidents,scenes,even typically supplements scene, but Holle- town. They first meet at the local boat
lines of dialogue drift between the books, ran inverts that hierarchy. In “Dancer,” ramp, a cruising spot that the narrator
and certain events take on a totemic force: we are not shown particular evenings as of “The Beauty of Men” spends much
a roommate’s suicide; a father calling out much as we are told what the baths,clubs, of his time haunting but which has since
after suffering a stroke; a mother asking and parties were generally like. Often, been ruined by police surveillance and
her adult son if he is gay and the son’s there is a sense of torpor that makes sce- online personals. They don’t have sex—
panicked denial. nic action seem impossible. One reason the narrator is youth-obsessed, and Earl
Holleran’s extravagant queens are so po- is twenty years his senior—but Earl be-
The protagonist’s mother is the most tent a resource for his work—Suther- comes a sort of anchor for the narrator,
vivid presence in these books.In “Nights land-like characters appear in “Nights in who, after the death of his mother, feels
in Aruba,”she is a bored,imperious,heav- Aruba,”“The Beauty of Men,” and sev- unmoored.They spend evenings watch-
ily drinking housewife, who insists that eral of the best stories in his excellent ing movies in Earl’s house; they call each
her young son stay with her while she collection, “In September, the Light other to report on sales at the supermar-
finishes a final drink.“You don’t love me,” Changes,”from 1999—is that they break ket, or on an attractive bag boy; they go
she accuses the boy—one of many in- this torpor,creating,with their antics and blueberry picking together.
aphorisms,specific,heightened moments.

70 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

Earl is sixty-two when he and the nar- Earl’s death fails to serve as a climax, echoes a passage in “The Beauty of Men”
rator meet; he will die twenty-six years though it does occasion the book’s most that expresses a similarly metaphysical
later. The transformation of gay life in beautiful passage: faith in heterosexuality:“People pass their
those decades—by increased visibility, lives in the chain of being. . . . There’s a
marriage equality, Internet cruising— The storm was gone, the day was cool and buzz of fertility,like bees on a hive,linked
seems largely to have passed the narra- breezy, the light was different. It was a crisp au- through cellular multiplication and blood.
tor by, or to have been neutralized by tumn day in North Florida, with the fresh, clean They’re never alone.” “All extramarital
small-town life and the ravages of aging. air that a good rain leaves behind. A breeze was sex is illicit,” he writes elsewhere in that
“Who were we kidding?” the narrator blowing; the goldenrod had started to turn yel- novel—still, after everything, the good
says, refusing to join a social group of low; the banana spiders—aka golden orbs—had Catholic child.
older gay men,sure that any hope of “love begun to spin their enormous gilded webs; but-
or even companionship” at his age is ab- terflies sat on the ground when I walked out, Holleran is unusually frank about the
surd. He spends his days watching por- folding and unfolding their wings, as if exhausted continuing toll of queer shame, even in
nography online, but dismisses dating by summer. So this is the day after death, I a liberated age. “I’ve been a flop as a ho-
sites,which he says are full of “panty boys.” thought. This is the day Earl did not witness. mosexual,” Lark says in “The Beauty of
After viewing a 1919 film about the black- Men.” “Some final loathing of the con-
mail of a gay man, he complains to Earl The motionlessness of Holleran’s nov- dition, some inability to accept my fate,
that “nothing had changed, that he and els mirrors an experience, shared by has led me, like so many of my kind, to
I lived like sex offenders. . . . We had im- all his protagonists, of being stuck, un- dissociate sex from everything else in my
prisoned ourselves under a sort of volun- able to begin a responsible,adult life.The life, from every other aspect of my char-
tary house arrest.” “The police aren’t keep- narrator of “Dancer” describes himself acter.” Rereading Holleran, I kept a list
ing me here,”Earl responds.“Old age is!” as “trapped, like a fly in amber”; Paul, in of metaphors that he applies to gay men:
“Nights in Aruba,”confesses to a “strange they are ghosts, vampires, kamikaze pi-
The long span of “Hurricane Weather” passivity.” The protagonist of “The King- lots, dune creatures, dogs, buzzards, and,
poses difficulties for Holleran’s approach dom of Sand” identifies with tree frogs repeatedly,roaches—leaping out of those
to narrative. We lose track of where we that get into his house and cannot es- Everard windows,feeding on the crumbs
are in time, which results in disorient- cape. Releasing them, he thinks of a fa- of “imagined loves,” swarming together
ing contradictions and ambiguities.We’re mous line from Henry James’s “The Am- only to be eradicated,“a problem in pest
told on one page that the narrator has bassadors,” which Holleran has slightly control.”Even as I value Holleran’s can-
“neither swept nor vacuumed the floor misquoted multiple times in his career, dor, and his refusal of triumphalist nar-
in years,” yet two pages later we see him doubling James’s first word: “Live, live ratives of queer affirmation—sometimes
with dustpan in hand. When Earl and all you can, it’s a mistake not to!” One it doesn’t get better, or not for every-
the narrator watch “Notorious,” or lis- morning, the narrator finds one of these one—these moments are painful to read.
ten to Schubert’s “An die Musik,” it is frogs, already dead, hanging on the in- My face seats five, my honeypot’s on fire,
often unclear what year, or even what side of a porch door,“looking out toward I murmured to myself, longing for a
decade, is being described. As with the the garden it could not reach.” “I left it Sutherland to snap Holleran’s characters
six years in “Dancer” and the semester there,” he says, “because it so perfectly out of their self-loathing.
in “Grief,” Holleran treats the quarter exemplified my own predicament.”The
century of the friendship as an unvarie- self-mockery strikes a tone of gothic For all the autobiographical details
gated whole. Such avoidance of narra- camp which relieves the gloom. that Holleran’s protagonists have in com-
tive tension comes to seem laborious, mon with their creator, their sense of
particularly when the elements of a com- The paralysis portrayed by Holleran stasis, of having accomplished nothing
pelling plot rise into view: Earl begins is deepened by but predates the dual with their lives, depends on a crucial
to depend on a handyman for assistance, shocks of AIDS and his mother’s acci- omission. We hear about the characters’
and as this man’s responsibilities grow— dent, and is linked to what both he and odd jobs from their New York days (dog
from household repairs to driving and his protagonists experience as the ca- walker,proofreader),but only the teacher
shopping and, eventually, serving Earl tastrophe of homosexuality. In an essay in “Grief ”has a vocation; none describes
his meals and handling his finances— on his undergraduate years at Harvard, himself as a writer. Holleran’s protago-
the narrator becomes jealous and, later, Holleran writes of learning about “the nists can sound like one of Shakespeare’s
concerned about possible exploitation. six crises Erik Erikson taught were part procreation sonnets, as if only children
of the human life cycle (‘intimacy’—with could be a valuable record of one’s pas-
There are the makings here of a melo- a member of the opposite sex—being sage on earth. Thinking of a lover with
drama like the ones that Earl and the one I flunked, preventing me from mov- a daughter from a youthful liaison, Lark
narrator enjoy watching. But these el- ing on to ‘generativity,’i.e.,parenthood).” muses on “the one ejaculation that had,
ements remain inert. Narrative is ordi- Throughout his books, a meaningful life unlike all of Lark’s, consequences; con-
narily created by the disruption of a sta- depends upon the heterosexual family sequences in time.” Homosexual life,
tus quo; Holleran seems to want a novel unit. Watching a group of neighbors homosexual love, by contrast,“leaves no
that is all status quo, no disruption. We standing around a bonfire at Christmas, impression whatsoever.”Nothing in Hol-
are left with what he has called, in an the narrator of “The Kingdom of Sand” leran’s work, save the work itself, ac-
essay, “the actual dull reality of life, its sees them as part of “the great Chain of knowledges Shakespeare’s other remedy
longueurs and nagging angst.” Even Being,” which both excludes him and for transience: the “living record”of art. 
invalidates his existence. The moment

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 71

THE ART WORLD blown up. Their frequent ingenuous-
ness tantalizes. It is a fact of the art-lov-
SCALING UP ing experience that serious but failed
ambitions teach more about the tenor
Early modernism at the Whitney and a show by Walter Price. of their times than contemporaneous
successes, which freeze us in particu-
BY PETER SCHJELDAHL lar, awed fascination.

Irelish the abundance of relatively— 1900 to 1965, on the seventh floor.That When something doesn’t quite co- COURTESY WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
and poignantly—dud paintings in long-running installation parades feats here, you can see what it’s made of.
“At the Dawn of a New Age: Early by American adepts—Edward Hop- Sources and intentions glare from the
Twentieth-Century American Mod- per, Alexander Calder, Jacob Lawrence, canvases. Historical museums should
ernism,”at the Whitney Museum.With Willem de Kooning—along various incorporate more of such stuff, to con-
an emphasis on abstraction, the show routes, with propitious detours toward textualize the happy shocks of excel-
features a number of rarely exhibited world-beating Abstract Expressionism, lence, which, on the two floors of the
works, most owned by the museum, Pop art, and Minimalism. Whitney, include hits in almost their
that were made during the learning- initial at-bats by John Marin, Arthur
curve years—at full tilt by 1912—of art- “At the Dawn,” organized by the Dove, Stuart Davis, Georgia O’Keeffe,
ists on these shores who strove to ab- curator Barbara Haskell, samples pro- Florine Stettheimer, and the ever-
sorb the revolutionary innovations that vincial talents who had plenty of moxie amazing Marsden Hartley,whose pow-
had originated in Europe. Occupying but remained shallowly rooted in the ers of emblematic abstraction peaked
the museum’s eighth floor, the array dashing radicality with which Euro- in 1914 in Berlin, during a sojourn
provides a sidelight (or prequel) to the peans eclipsed embedded traditions. from his native Maine, and persisted
Whitney’s selection of touchstone The aspiring Americans thrilled to the sub rosa throughout his later South-
pieces from its collection, dating from explosion but tended to be hazy on ex- western and New England landscapes
actly what,in prior art history,was being and homoerotic figurations. Those
artists promulgated authentic decla-
Marsden Hartley’s “Forms Abstracted” (1914) is a declaration of independence. rations of independence.

The distinguishing test, for me, is
scale, irrespective of size: all a work’s
elements and qualities (even including
negative space) must be snugged into
its framing edges to consolidate a spe-
cific, integral object—present to us,
making us present to itself—rather
than a more or less diverting hand-
made picture. Among the painters in
“At the Dawn,” that sort of resolution
eluded the likes of the Chicagoan
Manierre Dawson, America’s first true
abstractionist and a highly promising
artist until, in 1914, he withdrew to run
a farm in Michigan; the color stylists
Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Pat-
rick Henry Bruce, whose lastingly se-
ductive but fitful beauties went pretty
much nowhere; and the Russian-born
Max Weber, whose extraordinary “Chi-
nese Restaurant” (1915) mashes up, at
a go, assorted tactics of Cubism and
never fails to beguile me even as it
doesn’t really work at all.

Sculptures by Elie Nadelman, who
was born in Poland, and Gaston
Lachaise, who emigrated from France,
memorialize a New York-based, sen-
suously decorative modernist chic.
Many other artists in the show were
immigrants, too: German, Italian, Pol-
ish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Japanese,

72 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022

Chinese, and British (does Canadian designed by the American-educated school, he served four years in the U.S.
count?), flavoring a cosmopolitan melt- British illustrator Pamela Colman Navy, chiefly to take advantage of the
ing pot. Works by several of the new- Smith in 1909 but that remained un- subsequent G.I. Bill financing of his art
comers are close calls in terms of qual- published until more than a decade studies at Middle Georgia College (now
ity.Visual rhapsodies by the Italian-born later. Such items plunge us into a by- part of Middle Georgia State Univer-
Joseph Stella include a game attempt gone cultural ferment whose paladins sity) and the (recently defunct) Art In-
to represent music with the frenetic may have sputtered in their aims but stitute of Washington, in Arlington,
“Der Rosenkavalier” (1913-14). Plan- who pitched into them enthusiasti- Virginia.He’s a Brooklynite today.These
gent landscapes by the German-born cally. Though they were only some- and other data points pepper an inter-
Oscar Bluemner,influenced by the Blue times personally allied, they evoke, en view, in the Financial Times, that was
Rider movement (which had convened masse, a national team effort. conducted last year by the Nigerian
German and Russian avant-gardists in American critic Enuma Okoro.A “dance
Munich), suffer from a certain cau- The show occasions time-travelling with whiteness” is how Price describes
tiousness. A Ukrainian unfamiliar to connoisseurship, to sort out instances his thinking behind work that he made
me, Ben Benn, went native with a cred- of brilliance from more prevalent dis- during a residency in London. He re-
itably sombre abstraction, “Cowboy appointments.You are there, immersed gards himself as “political, but not
and Horse” (1917). In general, though, in peaks and valleys of an effervescent overtly,” aiming to “make people com-
engagements with American subject day and age. I don’t expect your judg- fortable with being uncomfortable,”
matter are rare in the show. Imported ments to match mine. I recommend at- both aesthetically and by way of any
internationalism reigns. tending with an argumentative com- worldly association that occurs to them.
panion. The very unevenness of the
Of passing reward are stabs at mys- offerings makes for fine sport. When Price said that he shuns all social
ticism by lately rediscovered mavericks, you think about it, art appreciation par- media: “Too much looking and not
including the German-born Califor- allels all manner of games that people enough thinking.”The abnegation pays
nian Agnes Pelton, the subject of a de- play—not least baseball, the individu- off. Inexhaustibly surprising smears,
lightful but not entirely convincing ret- alistic American invention that has just blotches, fugitive lines, and incomplete
rospective at the Whitney in 2020. lost its Homeric bard, Roger Angell, to patterns feel less applied than turned
Pelton’s richly hued, luminous “Ahmi unexpectedly devastating effect for some loose, to tell enigmatic stories of their
in Egypt” (1931), which depicts a swan of us—with the pesky difference that own. The effect is redoubled in his ex-
beneath cascading abstract symbols art does so without a scoreboard and, uberant,earthy drawings in which,often,
against a black ground, anticipates a eschewing inning breaks, never ends. faces and figures share spaces with vi-
penchant among some present-day sual equivalents of improvisatory jazz.
painters for themes of the otherworldly. Several younger painters today play I can think of no precedent for Price’s
(This penchant was given a boost in at hybridizing representation and style-defying style except in the spirit,
2018 by a sensational show, at the Gug- abstraction. It’s a mode of have-it-all though not the look, of certain decom-
genheim, of immense proto-abstrac- eclecticism that is frequently redolent posed compositions by Cy Twombly.
tions by the early-twentieth-century of the wishful artists’ statements that There are occasional longueurs, as seen
Swedish spiritualist Hilma af Klint,who art schools require their students to in dotted lines that seem overly calcu-
had long been all but forgotten.) “Ahmi write—a godforsaken prose genre that lated to knit a surface. But even these
in Egypt” is lovely but verges, to my is, at best, wholesomely cynical. (Grad- glitches evince Price’s compulsion to
eye, on suggesting an overqualified uates in literature aren’t obliged to sup- risk all manner of painterly tropes. To
greeting card. Of related relevance is a plement their theses with paintings.) think is to do, for him. Staggeringly
watercolor with pencil drawing by the But here I am, wowed by “Pearl Lines,” prolific, he recalls Oscar Wilde’s doc-
chronically underrated Charles Burch- a large show at Greene Naftali of paint- trine of mastering temptations by suc-
field, “Sunlight in Forest” (1916)—dark ings and drawings by Walter Price, cumbing to them.
trees pierced vertically by a tonguelike thirty-three years old, who deploys just
shaft of white sunlight—which heralds such crossover stratagems with ster- You must physically encounter
the soulful idiosyncrasy of Burchfield, ling discipline and untrammelled lib- Price’s paintings to grasp their dynam-
a Lutheran mystagogue of small-town erty. The forms of his eloquently col- ics. Scale is germane: both internally,
and rural epiphanies who was close orful art, which mingles imagery of in the jostle of mismatched marks and
friends with Hopper. His enraptured banal manufactured objects with evo- textures, and externally, relating to the
art keeps looking stronger, in hindsight. cations of fire and water, can seem at proportions of your body. This may be
once to fly apart and somehow to pre- true in general of any effective paint-
In addition, room is made for ex- cipitate ineffable harmonies. They ing, but it is essential in this case. It
citingly Expressionist woodcuts from qualify as decorative in the way that enables an exhilarating sense of par-
the mid-twenties by the Black artist climbing a Himalayan peak might be ticipation,as if,by viewing a work stroke
Aaron Douglas, which include a jag- deemed recreational. by stroke, you create it yourself. The
ged response to Paul Robeson’s per- artist has left you alone with it as he
formance in the Eugene O’Neill play Price was born in Macon, Georgia, departs toward something not quite
“The Emperor Jones,” and for a pi- and decided to become an artist while altogether but manifestly else, starting
quantly symbolist tarot deck that was in the second grade.Straight out of high from scratch again and yet again. 

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 73

THE CURRENT CINEMA Doc. As befits the grand occasion, Saul
is not laid on anything as drab as an op-
BODIES OF EVIDENCE erating table but housed within a darkly
molded hull, which is armored less like
“Crimes of the Future” and “Miracle.” a tank than like a cockroach. He seems
as snug as a bug. In a bug. Gregor Samsa
BY ANTHONY LANE would shake him by the claw.

It was in 1970 that David Cronenberg that is now foreseen by Cronenberg All of this creates an impressive spec-
gave us “Crimes of the Future.”Last- unfolds in a world of abandonment and tacle. But how new is that impression?
ing just over an hour, the film contained rot. Hulks of ships are beached like For many viewers,the organic-mechan-
no conversation.Instead,we were treated rusty whales. Streets are near-vacant ical-diabolical is a well-worn trope; it’s
to a voice-over from a reedy creep em- under the shroud of night. Every en- almost as if Cronenberg were pitching
ployed by, among other institutes, the counter has the air of a furtive conspir- a contribution to the “Alien” franchise
House of Skin. “There must evolve a acy, and the hero, Saul Tenser (Viggo in the nineteen-eighties.Indeed,“Crimes
novel sexuality,” he told us, “for a new Mortensen),is often clad in black robes, of the Future” could be titled “Themes
species of man.” We also heard a sym- with his face half masked. He looks of the Past.” Saul is seated and fed on
a skeletal chair, with his back against
In David Cronenberg’s sombre film, organ harvesting is performance art. its spine and a spoon raised to his mouth
by bony arms: a clever image, but no
phony of noises: clicks, beeps, and su- like a monk with a loaded conscience. smarter than the dish of gristle, in
surrations—a fitting soundtrack to In fact, Saul is a performance artist, Cronenberg’s “eXistenZ” (1999), from
Cronenberg’s subject,which was,as ever, which somebody fashioned a dripping
the variety of human disorders. The and what is performed upon him,for the gun. And, when Caprice kneels to kiss
movie was funny, slightly camp, and, delectation of a jaded audience, is sur- a bleeding horizontal slit in Saul’s
despite its limited special effects, gan- gery. He has a knack, if you can call it torso—is this a blasphemous reference
grenously unpleasant. that, for cultivating fresh and unprece- to the adoration of Christ’s wounds?—
dented organs inside his body, which his we’re only ninety degrees away from the
Well, here we are again. The latest professional partner, Caprice (Léa Sey- vertical abdominal slit in Cronenberg’s
Cronenberg film is also called “Crimes doux),then plucks like rare blooms.(Tra- “Videodrome”(1983),into which a video
of the Future.” It is not a remake of its ditional pain thresholds, we are given to cassette was thrust.If Cronenberg’s sense
namesake, still less a sequel.Yet its wor- understand,have all but vanished.) Once of humor weren’t quite so glum,he could
ries remain the same. Cronenberg can- a trauma surgeon, Caprice now wields end up directing a slitcom.
not stop wondering where on God’s no scalpel; rather, with the aid of a re-
earth (though God, one suspects, has mote control that resembles a squashy Sadly,the new film is glum,disheart-
long since fled the scene) our home- tortoise, she issues commands to robotic eningly so,and its narrative pulse is weak.
grown maladies will take us next. The limbs,which make the required incisions. All but gone is the driving excitement
one big change is that, whereas the old “Let us,”she declares,“like professors of of those tremendous works—“A His-
future was set amid clean and hard- literature, search for the meaning that tory of Violence”(2005),“Eastern Prom-
edged modern structures, the future lies locked in the poem.” If you say so, ises”(2007),and “A Dangerous Method”
(2011)—with which Cronenberg some-
how slipped the clutches of science fic-
tion without squandering its freakish
intensity. In each case, his leading man
was Mortensen, whose quick-witted
stance, grave but never leaden, served
to lift the spirits of the story. “Crimes
of the Future,” by contrast, straps him
down. He keeps emitting little grunts
and groans, as if struggling to be freed,
and most of his fellow-actors, similarly,
are forced toward the mannered and the
arch. Listen to the broken stammerings
of Don McKellar as an official at the
National Organ Registry, or to the
breathy gulps of Kristen Stewart as his
assistant. Has the drug of pretending to
be Princess Diana, in last year’s “Spen-
cer,” worn off completely?

The plot has many tentacles.For rea-
sons that I failed to grasp, Saul reports,

74 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY DANIELE CASTELLANO

undercover, to a detective (Welket Bun- like hemispheres. The first is about a do not hear those words, any more than
gué) from something called the New nun, or, to be exact, a novice nun. Her we hear what Bill Murray says to Scar-
Vice Unit. We also get two software name is Cristina (Ioana Bugarin), and, lett Johansson at the end of “Lost in
technicians (Nadia Litz and Tanaya given that her first act is to sneak out Translation”(2003), or what Edward G.
Beatty) who suddenly take their clothes of the convent with a change of clothes Robinson, his profile in shadow, mur-
off and jump into one of the surgical and to be ferried by taxi to the nearby murs to Lauren Bacall in “Key Largo”
pods as if enjoying an ocean dip. It’s the town, one fears that her novitiate has (1948). For moviegoers, there is no more
sole instance of anyone in this movie gone awry. Already, we are in the realm delicious—or more exasperating—en-
having fun, and all the more to be com- of lies and misconceptions; Cristina ticement than the art of the withheld.
mended. At the opposite extreme, we goes to the hospital, allegedly for pains
are invited to witness not only the death in the head, though she quietly slips off “Miracle” is busy on the eye. As in a
of a child but also, in lingering detail, to the obstetrics and gynecology de- documentary, we follow the characters
his postmortem—a gruesome artistic partment. She then catches another cab around from one task, whether grim or
decision that I, for one, will not attempt back to the convent,talking to the driver, menial, to the next. Stand back, how-
to defend. And yet, for anyone whose who seems a pleasant fellow. He is not. ever, and Apetri’s careful patterning can
stomach is as strong as Saul’s, it may be be discerned. The movie begins with a
worth braving “Crimes of the Future” The second half of the film revolves weeping Cristina, mirrored in a basin of
for the sake of a single conceit: a plan around a cop, Marius (Emanuel Pârvu), water; near the end, it is Marius who
to reboot the human digestive system whose job is to discover what has be- spies another reflection—one that ap-
so that we will gradually become capa- fallen Cristina. Because he is bearded pears to contravene reason—as he washes
ble of eating plastic. We, the destroyers, and bespectacled, with a professorial his face in a rippling river. The mood is
will thus be rid of our own industrial mien, we assume that he will be scru- at once down to earth,ragged with chats
waste. What an idea! Needless to say, pulous and fair. Wrong again. Marius about music and cars, and heightened
nobody but David Cronenberg could plants evidence; he assails a suspect; and by hints of the otherworldly. Likewise,
have dreamed it up. he reserves a particular contempt for the in the film’s most remarkable scene,there
faithful. “What did you think this was, is no mistaking the presence of evil at
When you go to see “Miracle,” at confession?”he says to a nun, having re- work, yet we observe it from a distance,
Film Forum, take a friend. Not duced her to tears.“To me,you spill your anything but clearly, in a dark wood.
because you’ll need someone to hang guts.” He orders his sidekick to get out Thunder mutters overhead, the wind
on to during the passages of high ten- of a car and walk, in the middle of the picks up, and human cries are half lost
sion (though you may) but because,once countryside, merely for mentioning the in the rustle of leaves. The camera, as
the movie is over, the two of you should Almighty. Why this secular zeal? Mar- though unable to watch for long, turns
head for the nearest bar, order shots, ius is chafing at the old superstitions, as its gaze to other sights and sounds: the
and ask each other, “What the hell was he regards them, that are entrenching bark of a dog, sheep’s bells, and two men
going on back there?” Even the final Romania in the past, but that’s not all. riding by,in all innocence,on horseback.
image of the film is a mystery. Something else is biting at his soul. We are not too far from “The Assassi-
nation of St. Peter Martyr,” painted by
The writer and director is Bogdan Other than being pistol-whipped by Giovanni Bellini more than five hun-
George Apetri, who is an assistant pro- Marius, nothing would make me dis- dred years ago; there,too,one can hardly
fessor at Columbia, though “Miracle” close everything that happens in this see the crime for the trees. Murders, like
is set wholly in his native Romania—a film. Parts of it I still don’t understand. wonders, will never cease. 
country about which the characters never The most revelatory of the twists (there
cease to complain. The story is divided are many) consists of a simple kiss, just NEWYORKER.COM
into two parts, and they lock together after someone has leaned close to Mar-
ius and whispered words in his ear. We Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 2022 75

CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three
finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Drew Dernavich,

must be received by Sunday, June 12th. The finalists in the May 30th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the June 27th issue. Anyone age thirteen

or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“”

..........................................................................................................................

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“You really want to add a kid to all this?” “We usually don’t deliver above Eighty-second Street.”
Hilton Hebb, Jacksonville, Fla. Ryan Kendall, Novato, Calif.

“I don’t usually do this on a first date.”
Lawrence Wood, Chicago, Ill.

“See, I do things around the house.”
Daniel Renton, Saint John, N.B.



1 23456 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT. 15 16

THE 17 18
CROSSWORD
19 20
A challenging puzzle.
21 22 23 24 25
BY ANNA SHECHTMAN
26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36

ACROSS 37 38
1 Vichyssoise, e.g.
7 Sharp, as pain 39 40
15 Lindy West essay collection subtitled
41 42 43 44
“Notes from a Loud Woman”
16 Response to bathroom humor, maybe 45 46 47 48
17 Perfectionist’s bane
18 Summer birthstones 49 50 51 52 53 54
19 Type of reading program?
21 May of “Nichols and May” 55 56 57 58
22 Fios and Xfinity, for short
26 Bedazzle, say 59 60
30 Fix, as a soundtrack
32 A.O.C.’s Courage to Change, e.g. 61 62
33 Start of a diplomatic statement
35 Supplicate 6 ___ de México (Mexico City daily) 46 Kuwaiti heads of state
37 Ones well past their prime
38 Container on an old steamship 7 More schmaltzy 48 Big name in bauxite mining
39 Rhododendron relative
40 Odds that a randomly selected key 8 Last words? 50 Android operating system between
Nougat and Pie
on a grand piano is not a C 9 See eye to eye about
41 Console that débuted in 2006 51 Flits (about)
42 Medium for a message 10 ___-a-brac
44 Zora Neale Hurston and Sheryl 52 Wisecrack
11 ___ Tree (sacred fig under which
Underwood, sororally Siddhartha Gautama is said to have 53 Part of Q.E.D.
45 Hawaii’s state bird gained enlightenment)
47 O’Connor with a memorable 1992 54 “Curious George” authors Margret
12 “Sands of ___ Jima” and H. A.
“S.N.L.” appearance
49 Writer who might provide grounding 13 Fiend 55 Word in the names of two Central
American capitals
advice? 14 Geocacher’s tool, for short
55 Dorothy Parker, e.g. 56 “Te ___”
58 Director Denis 20 They may be worn with cholis
59 Non-French liqueur in a French 57 Bit of needlework?
23 Cybersecurity brand with a “Search &
Connection Destroy” program Solution to the previous puzzle:
60 Seasoning used to flavor limited-edition
24 Miller who won a Tony for her P A LME DOR Z E BRAS
Goldfish crackers, in 2022 performance in the 2013 revival of
61 Less than great “Pippin” ATEAL I VE ERRATA
62 What you will?
25 Tearoom options WA I T A S E C S E ADOG
DOWN
1 National Merit Scholarship screener, for 26 When Eos “touched the sky with roses,” STARTERK I T N I NE
in the Odyssey
short YEN OK S DOE S
2 “Alas!” 27 Humdinger
3 Colorful bowlful CEO GON E CAR
4 “___ It Fun” (Grammy-winning 28 Come by
29 Like e but not i P E T SCANS DAMAG E
Paramore hit)
5 Like rice vermicelli and glass noodles 31 Subjects of a 2004 lawsuit filed by Mattel B ROHUGS L AMB DA S

34 Thinker who wrote, “There is no art RANK L E WE T P A I N T
which one government sooner learns of
another than that of draining money CA L NOT A S OG
from the pockets of the people”
P LOD ATV BTS
36 ___ barbadensis (dry-climate plant)
H I LO T H E B AHAMA S
38 Whom a stan laurels?
I T L L DO NOS E D I V E
40 Wee one
S H A L OM I B E FOR E E
43 ___ please
HOR S E S NOS T R E S S

Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at

newyorker.com/crossword

Photograph / Jennifer Chase

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