It’s Mourning in America

A Weekend Essay on the privatization of grief. Plus: the Supreme Court’s sensible decision on guns; and Anthony Fauci’s side of the story. View in browser | Update your preferences Saturday, June 22, 2024 In today’s newsletter, The Weekend Essay, and then: • The Supreme Court’s sensible decision on guns • Anthony Fauci’s side of the story • Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film, reviewed It’s Mourning in America In the past century, grief has shifted from a public process to a private problem—something meant to be solved. Is there a better way? By Cody Delistraty Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker In my childhood home, a modest, low-slung rectangle in eastern Washington, my mother was a bedroom away from me when she experienced her last moment. I remember standing in front of her, just after, feeling that I was watching a show or a movie, that this up-close experience was somehow false. I had never seen death in person before. I had, however, seen it frequently on my phone’s screen, on my laptop, on TV, in movie theatres. So what was I looking at here? At my mother’s bedside, having never had the chance to confront serious loss in any substantive way, I was without comparison. In the following weeks, I struggled to accord what I’d seen with the world beyond our home. Looking around, it sometimes seemed loss and grief hardly existed at all. Keep reading If you know someone who would enjoy the daily, please share it. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up. From the News Desk Daily Comment The Supreme Court Issues a Sensible Decision on Guns The new ruling upheld a law barring those under certain domestic-violence restraining orders from possessing firearms—but the Court’s stance on gun laws remains trapped in ambiguity. By Amy Davidson Sorkin The Political Scene Podcast What to Expect from the Biden-Trump Debate, with the Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin “If anybody’s wondering whether debates matter,” Evan Osnos says, “the truth is that the history on this is pretty eloquent, which is that they do matter in very tight contests.” Editor’s Pick Books Anthony Fauci’s Side of the Story The former NIAID director has been both lauded and demonized for his work during the COVID pandemic, but his autobiography insists that his career needs to be seen whole to be understood. By Jerome Groopman Books We Recommend This Week Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction. Long Island, by Colm Tóibín (Scribner). Eilis Lacey, an Irish immigrant in New York whom Tóibín introduced in his novel “Brooklyn,” returns in this deeply felt but resolutely unsentimental sequel. The book, which takes place in the nineteen-seventies, two decades after the events of the earlier installment, opens with Eilis—now a mother of two living on Long Island—learning that her Italian American husband has impregnated another woman. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Ask Me Again, by Clare Sestanovich (Knopf). This début novel, by a noted writer of short stories, begins as Eva, the self-conscious teen-age daughter of middle-class parents, befriends a boy named Jamie, an intellectual with a contrarian streak who comes from a wealthy family. In the next few years, Eva graduates from a prestigious college and gets a job at a newspaper while contending with romances, ambitions, a nascent political consciousness, and a changing relationship with her parents. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Orwell’s Ghosts, by Laura Beers (Norton). In the nearly seventy-five years since George Orwell’s death, his writing has been appropriated for various ideological ends. In this lucid, engaging study, Beers teases out its intricacies, considering, for instance, Orwell’s dual commitment to socialist revolution and “traditional” English society; his apparent dismissal of feminism; his belief in individual liberty; and why he ultimately valued truth above freedom of speech. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Vows, by Cheryl Mendelson (Simon & Schuster). This timely, if uneven, blend of social science, history, literary criticism, and anecdote mounts a defense of monogamous marriage as the “world’s best blueprint for happiness.” Mendelson is on firm footing as she traces the evolution of standard marriage vows from their feudal roots, and she makes compelling points regarding the interconnectedness of love, desire, and commitment. But other sections, including an underbaked one positing a causal relationship between a monogamy-based society and a strong G.D.P., are less persuasive. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. The best books of 2024 so far What are you reading this week? Reply to let us know. Culture Dept. The Current Cinema The Monotonous Miseries of “Kinds of Kindness” Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film casts the same set of actors in a trio of stories, all of them cruel. By Justin Chang Legacy Dept. Deaccessioning the Delights of Robert Gottlieb The eminent editor’s wife and daughter sift through a lifetime’s worth of collectibles: quirky plastic purses, a porcelain Miss Piggy, and many, many books. By Zach Helfand P.S. Meryl Streep turns seventy-five today. Before she was the “unsinkable queen of acting,” as Michael Schulman puts it, she was still, well, Meryl Streep—a high-school homecoming queen, naturally. She has always been “a woman of uncanny ability and drive, blessed with a superhuman sense of self-possession,” Schulman writes. “But she didn’t always know how to apply her gifts.” What did you think of today’s newsletter? Let us know. 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