| | | In today’s newsletter, Peter Slevin reports from a Kamala Harris–Liz Cheney event in Wisconsin. But, first, Tad Friend on a book-world scandal. Plus: • A hundred thousand humdrum images
• Sipping dirty soda
• The future of Hamas and Hezbollah | | | | Glenn Horowitz built a fortune selling the archives of writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Alice Walker. Then a rock star pressed charges. By Tad Friend  Photograph by Brian Finke for The New Yorker If Glenn Horowitz comes calling, should you be flattered or alarmed? It means that you have an exceptional literary reputation. It also means that your time on earth is nearly up. Horowitz, a rare-book dealer of matchless temerity and flair, has sold the papers and possessions of more Nobel laureates than anyone else; he describes himself, with derisive pride, as “the Grim Reaper with a sack of shekels on his back.” He sold the archives of Gabriel García Márquez, J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, and Bob Dylan, as well as books from Derek Walcott’s library, manuscripts of Seamus Heaney poems and Saul Bellow stories, spicy letters that he acquired from one of William Faulkner’s mistresses, and Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Yiddish typewriter. He also sold Alice Walker’s papers for $1 million, Vladimir Nabokov’s for $1.375 million, Cormac McCarthy’s for $2 million, Norman Mailer’s for $2.5 million, and John Updike’s for $3 million, arranging a deal between Harvard University and Updike’s widow a few years after Updike said that allowing him into the house would be like “visiting the undertaker who’s going to bury me.” Horowitz’s knock is the scrape of the chisel on your tombstone. When he was preparing to sell Tony Kushner’s archive, Kushner insisted that he not be marketed as the “Angels in America” guy, a one-hit wonder. The dealer replied, “If you hadn’t written ‘Angels in America,’ we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Horowitz, who is sixty-nine, plows through as many as two hundred and fifty books a year and can tell a lively story about nearly everything he’s read or heard or done. He deals in stupendous things, and his gift is to illuminate their stupendousness, as Las Vegas illuminates the night sky. . . | | | | This article is for paid subscribers only. A subscription to The New Yorker gets you: - Unlimited access to vital journalism that helps you make sense of the moment, including timely coverage of the 2024 election by our expert reporters and columnists.
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| | | | | On the Trail | Courting Republicans for Harris  Photograph by Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Peter Slevin
Reporting from Wisconsin The stage set for the visit of Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney to Wisconsin’s Waukesha County on Monday night could hardly have looked more buttoned-down Republican. Tall boards painted with the American flag bookended the platform, and a pair of red signs behind the neatly dressed audience seated on risers trumpeted “Country Over Party.” When Cheney walked onstage, before Harris, the crowd rose to its feet and gave her a sustained ovation peppered with shouts and whistles. Here was the G.O.P. apostate who came to suburbia to urge fellow-Republicans to join her in rejecting Donald Trump. “You just can’t count on him. You cannot trust him,” she said. “We’ve seen the man that he is. We’ve seen the cruelty, and America deserves much better.” Cheney’s trip to Waukesha County, which Trump won twice—but by roughly seventy-five hundred fewer votes in 2020 than in 2016—is part of the Harris campaign’s strategy to peel away suburban Republicans still loyal to their party but put off by Trump’s vulgarity, criminality, and contempt for the Constitution. As Harris, seated next to Cheney, put it, “Trump is an unserious man, and the consequences of him ever being President of the United States again are brutally serious.” It was the third of three stops for the pair on Monday, following appearances in the suburbs of Detroit and Philadelphia. Cheney, who lost her G.O.P. leadership position and her seat in Congress for opposing Trump’s attempt to reverse the 2020 election, heads a long and still growing list of notable Republicans and former Trump national-security officials who are warning against a second Trump term. She drew cheers and laughter when she said, “If you wouldn’t hire somebody to babysit your kids, you shouldn’t make that guy President of the United States.” | | | |  | If you know someone who would enjoy this newsletter, please share it. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up. | | | | | The Lede | Reporting and commentary on what you need to know today.  Photograph by Majid Saeedi / Getty Israel is displaying a sense of “triumphalism” after killing Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, and Hassan Nasrallah, the political leader of Hezbollah. But, considering the U.S.’s track record on counterterrorism in the Middle East, this celebratory attitude is not sustainable. Robin Wright reports » | | | | | | Editor’s Pick |  On and Off the Menu The Unexpected Pleasures of a Dirty SodaFountain drinks spiked with syrups, creamers, and fruit purées became a sensation among Mormon mothers in Utah. Now they’re finding fans across America. By Hannah Goldfield | | | | | Joshua Rothman | |  Illustration by Josie Norton These days, people are taking more photographs than ever. And many images are of simple, everyday things—for Joshua Rothman, it’s his cat, his coffee mug, his family, a hydrant near his home. What can we learn about our lives by capturing the mess and mud of the day-to-day, in thousands of pictures? Read the column » Open Questions publishes every Tuesday. | | | | Fun & Games Dept. |  Crossword A Moderately Challenging Puzzle “Pokémon” villains who announce that they’re “blasting off again” after being defeated: ten letters. By Brooke Husic |  Daily Cartoon Tuesday, October 22nd By Brendan Loper | | | | |  | Name Drop: Can you guess the identity of a notable person—contemporary or historical—in six clues? Play a quiz from our archive » | | | | | P.S. In Utah, where dirty soda reigns, the topography is “spectacular, desolate, and extreme,” Kathryn Schulz writes. She visited the state in 2018 to report on the “epic battle” between the Trump Administration and a couple of restaurant chefs fighting to save the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. “One of the most beautiful things about being in Grand Staircase,” Schulz notes, “is that, out in the deep middle of it, with all of prehistory underfoot and twelve-billion-year-old starlight overhead, the world feels enduring and eternal.” 🥾 | | | | Hannah Jocelyn contributed to this edition. | | | | | | | |
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