New York City in the Coronavirus Pandemic

Plus: Elizabeth Kolbert on pandemics throughout history, a letter from George Saunders to his students, and a dancer’s mental unravelling. View in browser | Update your preferences Comment New York City in the Coronavirus Pandemic The spectacle of New York without New Yorkers is the result of a communal pact. We know that life now depends on our withdrawal from the city. By David Remnick A Critic at Large Pandemics and the Shape of Human History Outbreaks have sparked riots and propelled public-health innovations, prefigured revolutions and redrawn maps. By Elizabeth Kolbert Dispatch Illinois Confronts a Chaotic White House Approach In the face of a coming COVID-19 peak, federal support in the fight against the pandemic has been minimal, unpredictable, and deeply frustrating to Chicago’s mayor and Illinois’s governor. By Peter Slevin Medical Dispatch How to Hope: Lessons from a Children’s Hospital There’s nothing ordinary about the hospital under the shadow of the coronavirus, but working with families over years teaches you to hope that life reconstitutes on the other side of catastrophe. By Chris Adrian Newsletters Sign Up for The New Yorker’s Books & Fiction Newsletter Book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature, twice a week. Your Sunday Read A Reporter at Large The Unravelling of a Dancer Sharon Stern devoted herself to Butoh dance, a Buddhist-influenced Japanese art form. She followed her mentor, a famous Butoh artist, in everything, and said that she wanted to work on “entering the darker places of myself, fearlessly.” But soon she began to unravel mentally, and her parents and friends say that her mentor encouraged her loss of self. Rachel Aviv’s spellbinding story examines how we can lose ourselves in what we love, and whether another person can be at fault for the harm that we do to ourselves. By Rachel Aviv Culture and More Page-Turner A Letter to My Students as We Face the Pandemic It’s good for the world for a writer to bear witness, and it’s good for the writer, too. Especially if she can bear witness with love and humor and, despite it all, some fondness for the world. By George Saunders Culture Desk The Eerie Familiarities of “Nemesis,” Philip Roth’s Novel of a Polio Epidemic The writer’s last novel foretells, in crucial practical detail, the lines of stress that the coronavirus pandemic is revealing today. By Richard Brody Humor and Puzzles Daily Shouts A Selection of Panic Purchases Products to ease the hours (and days and weeks) of self-isolation. By Scott Goodman Puzzles and Games Dept. The Cryptic Crossword: No. 52 Confine group of sheep lacking leader (4). By Mike Shenk Sign up for more newsletters from The New Yorker. Visit The New Yorker shop. Question about your subscription? Contact Customer Care. New Yorker digital subscribers get unlimited access to everything on newyorker.com. Log in to your account here. We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please send your thoughts and suggestions to TNYinbox@newyorker.com. This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, NewYorker@newsletters.newyorker.com, to your address book. View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2020. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.