4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
11 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Evan Osnos on the Trump-China pandemic fight;
voyeurs onscreen; groceries fresh from the back yard;
movie marquees; a nurse’s poems; where gloves go.
CORONAVIRUS CHRONICLES
James Somers 16 Breathing Room
Racing to solve the ventilator crisis.SHOUTS & MURMURS
Libby Gelman-Waxner 23 If You Ask Me: The Last Quarantine Think Piece
ANNALS OF ACTIVISM
Jia Tolentino 24 Can I Help You?
How the mutual-aid movement promises relief.A REPORTER AT LARGE
Ben Taub 30 Five Oceans, Five Deeps
A quest to get to the bottom of the world.
PROFILES
Alex Ross 46 The Fearless Pianist
Revolutionizing performance in lockdown.
FICTION
Jonathan Lethem 54 “The Afterlife”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Thomas Meaney 58 The making of Henry Kissinger.
63 Briefly Noted
Hua Hsu 65 What can fungi teach us?
Dan Chiasson 68 Wanda Coleman’s many identities.THE THEATRE
Alexandra Schwartz 70 When Zoom becomes a stage.THE ART WORLD
Peter Schjeldahl 72 Dorothea Lange and Félix Fénéon.
POEMS
David Biespiel 29 “Men Waiting for a Train”
Rae Armantrout 50 “Our Days”COVER
Anita Kunz “Class of 2020”DRAWINGS David Sipress, Emily Bernstein, Oren Bernstein,
Michael Maslin, Maddie Dai, Liana Finck, Frank Cotham, Avi Steinberg, Roz Chast,
Kendra Allenby, Charlie Hankin, Mitra Farmand S POTS Edward Steed