Contents
8 Robert Pogue Harrison Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri, translated from the Italian and with an introduction
and notes by Mary Jo Bang
Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri, translated from the Italian and with commentary by D. M. Black
After Dante: Poets in Purgatory: Translations by Contemporary Poets edited by Nick Havely
with Bernard O’Donoghue
Illustrations for Dante’s ‘Inferno’ by Rachel Owen, edited by David Bowe
14 Alma Guillermoprieto Tongolele Had No Rhythm by Sergio Ramírez
16 W. H. Auden Poem
20 Nathaniel Rich Harrow by Joy Williams
24 Marina Warner The Werewolf in the Ancient World by Daniel Ogden
30 Dan Chiasson The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 3: 1929 –1936 edited by Mark Richardson, Donald Sheehy,
Robert Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore
36 Ben Lerner Steffani Jemison: Broken Fall an exhibition at Greene Naftali, New York City
40 Irina Dumitrescu Matrix by Lauren Groff
46 Tim Flannery Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects by Jonathan Balcombe
48 Lorrie Moore Couples Therapy a documentary series directed by Josh Kriegman, Kim Roberts, Eli B. Despres,
and Elyse Steinberg
Scenes from a Marriage a miniseries written and directed by Hagai Levi and cowritten by Amy Herzog
52 Henry Louis Gates Jr. Inventing the Science of Race
and Andrew S. Curran
54 Lynn Emanuel Poem
58 Irving Howe Finding Babel in the Drawer
61 James Quandt Maria Lassnig: The Paris Years, 1960 – 68 an exhibition at the Petzel Gallery, New York City
Catalog of the exhibition with an essay by Lauren O’Neill- Butler
Maria Lassnig: Film Works edited by Eszter Kondor, Michael Loebenstein, Peter Pakesch,
and Hans Werner Poschauko
63 Joan Silber Objects of Desire by Clare Sestanovich
65 Coco Fusco Cuban Memory Wars: Retrospective Politics in Revolution and Exile by Michael J. Bustamante
Dancing with the Revolution: Power, Politics, and Privilege in Cuba by Elizabeth B. Schwall
68 James Walton A Shock by Keith Ridgway
76 David S. Reynolds The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
by Robert S. Levine
The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation by Brenda Wineapple
78 Sigrid Nunez Virtue by Hermione Hoby
80 Kwame Anthony Appiah The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David WengrowCONTRIBUTORS
Maya Chung and Lucy Jakub, Associate Editors; Nawal Arjini and Willa Glickman, Assistant Editors; Sable Gravesandy and Anacaona Rodriguez Martinez,
Editorial Interns; Sylvia Lonergan, Researcher; Will Palmer, Copyeditor; Daniel Drake, Production Editor; Will Simpson, Type Production; Kazue Jensen,
Production; Maryanne Chaney, Web Production Coordinator; Michael King, Technical Director; Sharmaine Ong, Advertising Associate; Nicholas During, Publicity;
Nancy Ng, Design Director; Janice Fellegara, Director of Marketing and Planning; Janis Harden, Fulfillment Director; Andrea Moore, Assistant Circulation Man-
ager; Matthew Howard, Editorial Director, Digital; Angela Hederman, Special Projects; Diane R. Seltzer, Office Manager; Patrick Hederman, Rights; Max Margenau,
Comptroller; Vanity Luciano, Assistant Accountant; Teddy Wright, Receptionist.
nybooks.com: Matt Seaton, EditorOn the cover: artwork and design by John Broadley. The photograph on page 48 is © 2021 Ulay/Marina Abramoviü. Courtesy of the Marina Abramoviü Archives/
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
The New York Review of Books (ISSN 0028-7504), published 20 times a year, monthly in January, June, August, and September; semi-monthly in February, March, April,
May, July, October, November, and December. NYREV, Inc., 435 Hudson Street, Suite 300, New York, NY 10014-3994. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY 10001
and at additional offices. Canada Post Corp. Sales Agreement #40031306. Postmaster: Send address changes to The New York Review of Books, P.O. Box 9310, Big Sandy,
TX 75755-9310. Subscription services: http://www.nybooks.com/customer-service, or e-mail [email protected], or call 800-354-0050 in the US, 903-636-1101 elsewhere.
Letters to the Editor: [email protected]. All other correspondence: The New York Review of Books, 435 Hudson Street, Suite 300, New York, NY 10014-3994;
[email protected]. Please include a mailing address with all correspondence. We accept no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts.
Subscription Services: nybooks.com/customer-service or The New York Review of Books, P.O. Box 9310, Big Sandy, TX 75755-9310, or e-mail [email protected].
In the US, call toll-free 800-354-0050. Outside the US, call 903-636-1101. Subscription rates: US, one year $99.95; in Canada, $110 ; elsewhere, $115.
Advertising: To inquire please call 212-757-8070, or fax 212-333-5374.
Copyright © 2021, NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved. Nothing in this publication may be reproduced without the permission of the publisher. The cover date of the
next issue will be January 13, 2022.Editor: Emily Greenhouse
Deputy Editor: Michael Shae
Executive Editor: Jana Prikryl
Senior Editors: Eve Bowen, Julie Just, Andrew Katzenstein, Hasan Altaf
Contributing Editors: Prudence Crowther, Gabriel Winslow-Yost
Art Editor: Leanne ShaptonFounding Editors : Robert B. Silvers (1929–2017)
Barbara Epstein (1928–2006)
Publisher: Rea S. Hederman
Advertising Director: Lara Frohlich Andersen
Editor-at-Large: Daniel MendelsohnWhat’s new on
nybooks.comKWAME ANTHONY APPIAH teaches philosophy at NYU. His latest
books are As If: Idealization and Ideals and The Lies That Bind: Rethinking
Identity.
W. H. AU DEN (1907–1973) was an English poet, playwright, and essayist.
His poem in this issue will appear in Poems, 1940–1973, the second of the
two final volumes in the Princeton University Press edition of The Complete
Works of W.H. Auden.
DAN CHIASSON ’s fifth book of poetry, The Math Campers, was pub-
lished last year. He teaches at Wellesley.
IRINA DUMITRESCU is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the
University of Bonn. Her book The Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon
Literature was published in paperback last year.
LY N N E M A N U E L ’s most recent poetry collection, The Nerve of It: Poems
New and Selected, won the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of
American Poets. Her forthcoming collection is Transcript of the Disappear-
ance, Exact and Diminishing.
TIM FLANNERY ’s most recent book is Europe: A Natural History.
COCO FUSCO is a New York City–based artist and the author of Danger-
ous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba.
HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. is the Alfonse Fletcher Jr. University Profes-
sor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American
Research at Harvard. He is the author, most recently, of The Black Church:
This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song. ANDREW S. CURRAN is the William
Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan. His latest books are
The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment
and Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely.
ALMA GUILLERMOPRIETO , who writes regularly for The New York
Review about Latin America, began her reporting career in Nicaragua,
covering the national insurrection against the dictatorship of Anastasio
Somoza.ROBERT POGUE HARRISON is the Rosina Pierotti Professor of Ital-
ian Literature at Stanford. His latest book is Juvenescence: A Cultural His-
tory of Our Age.
IRVING HOWE (1920–1993) was an American literary and social critic.
BEN LERNER ’s Gold Custody, a collaboration with the artist Barbara
Bloom, was published in October.
LORRIE MOORE is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of
English at Vanderbilt and the author of four story collections and three nov-
els. Her most recent book is a collection of essays, See What Can Be Done.
SIGRID NUNEZ ’s most recent novel, What Are You Going Through, was
published last year. Her previous novel, The Friend, received the 2018 Na-
tional Book Award for Fiction.
JAMES QUANDT is a regular contributor to Artforum. He has edited
monograph volumes on Robert Bresson, Shohei Imamura, Apichatpong
Weerasethakul, and Kon Ichikawa.
DAVID S. REYNOLDS , a Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Gradu-
ate Center, is the author or editor of sixteen books, including, most recently,
Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times.
NATHANIEL RICH is the author of Losing Earth, King Zeno, and Sec-
ond Nature: Scenes from a World Remade.
JOAN SILBER is the author of nine books of fiction, including, most
recently, Secrets of Happiness. Her novel Improvement won the National
Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award.
JAMES WALTON is a writer and broadcaster. He is the editor of The Fa-
ber Book of Smoking and the author of the literary quiz books Who Killed
Iago? and The Penguin Book Quiz: From the Very Hungry Caterpillar to
Ulysses.
MARINA WARNER ’s Esmond & Ilia: An Unreliable Memoir, about her
childhood in Cairo, will be published in the US next year. She is a Distin-
guished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Professor of English and
Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London.Ŷ Willa Glickman : Fruits of Empire
Ŷ Greil Marcus: Riding the Velvet UndergroundŶ David Rieff: Argentina’s Rebuke to Peronists
Ŷ Matt Seaton : An Etymology of Terror
Plus : Neal Ascherson digs into public archaeology, Christopher Benfey lingers on coincidence, and more...A LIFE OF
ITS OWN
ROB DUNN
A NATURAL
HISTORY OF
THE FUTURE
What the Laws of BiologyTell Us about the Destiny ofthe Human Species“A fascinating, shocking, and
inspiring guide to the future
by one of the most creative and
eloquent biologists of our time.
Dunn’s book is packed full of
insight from the latest scientifi c
discoveries about the wonders
and troubles of the living Earth.”
—DAVID GEORGE HASKELL,
author of The Forest Unseen“The fascinating and sobering
ecology of the Anthropocene.”
—REBECCA WRAGG SYKES,
author of Kindred“A lucid discussion.
.... Dunn’s absorbing
analysis advocates
making the most of the few
certainties we have.”
—SCIENTIFIC AMERICANbasicbooks.com5TOC_ 121621 .indd.indd 5 11 / 18 / 21 3 : 50 PM