The New York Times - 12.09.2019

C6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

In Memoriam

SUSAN KAMIL

SEPTEMBER 16, 1949 — SEPTEMBER 8, 2019

A Publisher Who Lighted Our Way

A Writer’s Editor

Our Beloved Champion, Always

The Obamas landed on Higher Ground,

inspired by the Stevie Wonder song of the

same name. But Ms. Massey got the name

first.

Higher Ground Enterprises started train-

ing people to use computers more than 10

years ago, Ms. Massey said. Her inspiration

for the name stems from her clients, who

she said wanted to be on a “higher playing

field.” Now, Ms. Massey said, her compa-

ny’s services include consulting, photogra-

phy, videography, e-books and other learn-

ing materials. It was her father who encour-

aged her to trademark Higher Ground En-

terprises, telling Ms. Massey, “you just

never know.”

The Obamas’ Higher Ground Produc-

tions has successfully found resolutions

with other similar trademark holders, the

company’s trademark lawyer, Jim Vana,

said in a statement. But with Ms. Massey’s

company, the Obamas have hit a snag.

Ms. Massey and her lawyer, Larry

Zerner, came back with a proposal to sell the

mark — in exchange for what Mr. Vana

called “significant demands,” including ap-

pearances in the Obamas’ TV and film pro-

ductions.

Ms. Massey referred all questions about

proposed terms to her lawyer, who con-

firmed that acting roles for Ms. Massey

were part of her suggested deal.

“It was not, ‘I want to star in a movie,’ ”

Mr. Zerner said in an interview. “It was like,

‘Can I get a bit part in something?’ ”

A few weeks ago Higher Ground Produc-

tions filed a petition to cancel Ms. Massey’s

trademark. Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard

Law School professor and an expert in intel-

lectual property law, said in an interview

that the goal of this move would be to deter-

mine whether Ms. Massey is actively and

regularly using the trademark to conduct

business. The Obamas’ filing starts a fact-

intensive inquiry that could take years to

sort out.

“If there’s not sufficient use of the mark,

then the registrant has no rights and the

Obamas can go ahead,” Ms. Tushnet said. If

there is sufficient use, she added, Ms.

Massey could have a potential trademark

infringement claim.

As for Ms. Massey’s request for roles in

the Obamas’ productions, it isn’t exactly

typical in trademark cases, Ms. Tushnet

said in an email. “I can’t say I’m super sur-

prised given the context (where she might

have greater than usual leverage in seeking

a role she might otherwise not be able to

get),” she wrote. “Nor am I surprised that it

wasn’t an acceptable term to the Obamas

given the interference with creative control

it would mean and given the lack of any ap-

parent relationship between that condition

and the rights to use the trademark.”

“Some judges might feel it’s kind of

tacky,” she added, “but it doesn’t affect the

legal question of who has the right to the

mark.”

Mr. Vana said Higher Ground Produc-

tions filed the petition after having difficulty

finding evidence of Ms. Massey’s company

or use of the trademark. Ms. Massey said

she has invoices and advertisements to

present as evidence. A client — Yvette Rod-

riguez, who said in an interview that Ms.

Massey has handled her nonprofit's social

media presence for about four years — sang

her praises.

But her company’s internet presence was

dormant for years, which Ms. Massey ar-

gues shouldn’t reflect her business pres-

ence. The current website for Higher

Ground Enterprises was still in develop-

ment on Sept. 4, but it was up and running

the next day. (The site was later updated to

include a section recommending Mr. Zern-

er’s services, which was then removed after

Ms. Massey was asked about it.)

Even without having had that presence

online for some time, this case and the peti-

tion have left Ms. Massey concerned about

the digital effect of the Obamas’ promi-

nence.

“It could definitely hurt my business se-

verely,” Ms. Massey said. “Because if you

Google this, this is the only thing that comes

up. And I am pretty much a little needle in

the haystack at this point.”

Mr. Vana, however, said that the petition

“in no way” hinders Ms. Massey’s ability to

run Higher Ground Enterprises.

It could be a while before there is an out-

come. Trademark cases are decided on pa-

per rather than in a courtroom, Mr. Zerner

said, and for a petition such as this one, the

Trademark Office automatically sets up

dates and deadlines. This case could stretch

into March 2021.

This isn’t a political fight for Ms. Massey,

who said she voted for Mr. Obama for presi-

dent both times. “They put their pants on

just like me, one leg at a time,” she said. “It

didn’t really make any difference to me who

it was.”

“They were the ones who started this. I’m

willing to go as far and long as it takes,” Ms.

Massey added. “The question is, can they?”

Michelle and Barack Obama ran into a snag trying to trademark “Higher Ground Productions.”

CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Obamas Seek Trademark

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1

A very powerful couple

versus a very determined

small business owner.

WE’RE MONSTERSinside our cars. In “Driv-

ing as Metaphor,” one of the essays in “Co-

ventry,” her sharp new miscellany, the Eng-

lish writer Rachel Cusk expresses mild sur-

prise that we don’t yet have airbags outside

our Vauxhall Corsas and Jeep Grand Chero-

kees. “The car is a more or less invincible

aggressor,” she writes. “Nothing soft and

living stands a chance against it.”

Behind the wheel, Cusk is in contact with

the malignant spirit inside herself. “Once in-

side a car it becomes permissible to com-

ment on those outside it, to remark on their

appearance or demeanor, with a brazen-

ness absent from most social situations.”

She adds, “Perhaps the soldiers of the past,

in their suits of armor, felt similarly disin-

hibited and more capable of violence.”

In the time of Brexit and MAGA, brazen-

ness is on Cusk’s mind. In her essay “On

Rudeness,” she distinguishes between dis-

courtesy and truth telling. “Society organ-

izes itself very efficiently to punish, silence

or disown truth tellers,” she writes. “Rude-

ness, on the other hand, is often welcomed

in the manner of a false god.”

Cusk senses an “intellectual unbutton-

ing” in this embrace of bad manners, and

she follows a certain apocalyptic awareness

into the deep end. “A friend of mine says this

is the beginning of the end of the global or-

der: He says that in a couple of decades’

time we’ll be eating rats and tulip bulbs, as

people have done before in times of social

collapse.”

She adds, in a sentence that imprints it-

self on one’s mind like a nighttime flare, “I

consider the role that good manners might

play in the sphere of rat-eating, and it seems

to me an important one.”

“Coventry” is Cusk’s first collection of es-

says. It also contains some book reviews

and introductions, but her heart does not

seem in them. She mediates between her

mind and the external world with a preci-

sion and agility that mostly goes missing

when she mediates between texts.

The essays in “Coventry” first appeared

in The New York Times Magazine, The

Guardian, Granta and other places. They’re

first-rate, marked by candor and serious-

ness, and they’re familiar. Cusk’s abiding

themes — her obligations as mother, daugh-

ter, citizen, artist and breadwinner — are

much the same as those that fill the solilo-

quies in her coolly glittering Outline trilogy.

Her writing about parenting is discerning

and granular. In an essay titled “Lions on

Leashes,” she describes raising two

teenage daughters after a divorce. “Until

adolescence, parents by and large control

the family story,” she writes. “But it is per-

haps unwise to treasure this story too

closely or believe in it too much, for at some

point the growing child will pick it up and

turn it over in his hands like some dispas-

sionate reviewer composing a coldhearted

analysis of an overhyped novel.”

Cusk writes with ambivalence about

motherhood. But quite often she seems like

a mother a child would be lucky to have.

“The traditional complaint about teenagers

— that they treat the place like a hotel — has

no purchase on me,” she writes. “In fact, I

quite like the idea. A hotel is a place where

you can come and go autonomously and

with dignity; a place where you will not be

subjected to criticism, blame or guilt; a

place where you can drop your towel on the

floor without fear of reprisal, but where,

hopefully, over time, you become aware of

the person whose job it is to pick it up and

instead leave it folded neatly on a chair.”

Cusk’s essays are subtle; they do not an-

nounce their intentions through a mega-

phone. She feels her way into her topics and

she will not be hurried. You read her for her

riddling questions, not whatever answers

might pop out at the end. She is often ambiv-

alent, but never neutral in the self-protec-

tive modern manner. She is a poet of split

feelings. Her inquisitive intelligence is the

rebar that, inside the concrete, holds the

edifice upright.

The title essay in “Coventry” may be its

finest. It begins this way: “Every so often,

for offenses actual or hypothetical, my

mother and father stop speaking to me.

There’s a funny phrase for this phenom-

enon in England: it’s called being sent to Co-

ventry.”

The thing about sending someone to Co-

ventry, Cusk notes, is that “it’s not a game

for those who require instant satisfaction. If

you don’t live with your victim or see them

every day, it might be a while before they

even notice they’ve been sent there. All the

same, there’s no mistaking this for anything

less deliberate than punishment. It is the at-

tempt to recover power through withdraw-

al, rather as the powerless child indignantly

imagines his own death as a punishment to

others. Then they’ll be sorry! It’s a gamble,

with oneself as the stakes.”

Like you, perhaps, I’ve been on both sides

of the silent treatment. It’s always a strange

thing to have on your table, the equivalent

of cold, dry British toast in a metal rack.

Cusk is pitiless about her parents, and any-

one else, who thinks this is a power move.

“They appear to be wielding power, but

I’ve come to understand that their silence is

the opposite of power,” she writes. “It is in

fact failure, their failure to control the story,

their failure to control me. It is a failure so

profound that all they have left to throw at it

is the value of their own selves, like desper-

ate people taking the last of their pos-

sessions to the pawnshop.”

I have quoted Cusk a great deal in this re-

view. There are more of her words here than

mine. Perhaps I am not earning my keep as

a critic. But sometimes you just need to get

out of the way.

DWIGHT GARNER BOOKS OF THE TIMES

Riddling Questions Superior to Any Answers

Essays by Rachel Cusk that

include thoughts on literature,

parenthood and manners.

Rachel Cusk, whose essays are marked by serious candor. She also wrote the Outline trilogy.

SIEMON SCAMELL-KATZ

Coventry: Essays
By Rachel Cusk
248 pages. Farrar, Straus
& Giroux. $27.