6 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Jelani Cobb on political violence and the election;
the lockdown porta-potty boom; Jason Scott Lee;
Calamityware; Roger Angell at a hundred.
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS
Laura Miller 20 Labyrinths
Susanna Clarke’s interior worlds.SHOUTS & MURMURS
Cora Frazier 25 Opt OutANNALS OF POLITICS
Joshua Yaffa 26 Believe It or Not
Assessing the threat of Russian disinformation.PERSONAL HISTORY
Jiayang Fan 32 Motherland
How a daughter’s struggle became Chinese propaganda.
PROFILES
Calvin Tomkins 42 The Adventures of Pipi
The video artist who inspired Beyoncé.FICTION
Douglas Stuart 52 “The Englishman”
THE CRITICS
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 60 “Tenet.”BOOKS
Hua Hsu 63 Can artists survive in the digital age?
67 Briefly Noted
James Wood 68 Yaa Gyasi’s “Transcendent Kingdom.”
Merve Emre 71 Sigrid Nunez’s “What Are You Going Through.”THE ART WORLD
Peter Schjeldahl 74 French drawings at the Clark Art Institute.POEMS
Diane Seuss 37 “I have slept in many places,
for years on mattresses that entered”
Roger Reeves 48 “Grendel”
COVER
Edward Steed “Overgrown”DRAWINGS Danny Shanahan, Kendra Allenby, Suerynn Lee, Anthony Martignetti,
Victoria Roberts, Zachary Kanin, P. C. Vey, Liana Finck, Ellis Rosen, Amy Hwang, Benjamin Schwartz,
Navied Mahdavian, E. S. Glenn, Kim Warp, Caitlin Cass S POTS Edward Steed