OCTOBER 17, 2022

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Masha Gessen on Putin’s view of the Russian World;
is everything rigged?; hierarchical values on the high seas;
tastes of the past; good for the soul—and the soil.
LETTER FROM INDIA
Samanth Subramanian 20 Screen Test
How the Hindu right is eroding Bollywood’s freedom.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Jay Martel 29 More Types of Parents
OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS
Rivka Galchen 30 Sound Affects
Fixing the acoustics for the New York Philharmonic.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Stephania Taladrid 36 The Abortion Underground
A push to get pills to the women who need them.
PORTFOLIO
Greg Miller 46 Waiting for the Bus in Uvalde
with Rachel Monroe Normal rituals take on new meaning in the Texas town.
FICTION
David Gilbert 58 “Come Softly to Me”
SKETCHBOOK
Roz Chast 65 “Here Is a Song My Son and I Sang to His
Almost Two-Year-Old Kid”
THE CRITICS
THE THEATRE
Helen Shaw 68 Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” opens on Broadway.
BOOKS
Katy Waldman 71 Complex loss in the fiction of Lydia Millet.
73 Briefly Noted
Joan Acocella 74 “The Betrothed,” by Alessandro Manzoni.
MUSICAL EVENTS
Alex Ross 80 Cherubini’s “Medea” and Rossini’s “Otello.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 82 “Decision to Leave,” “Amsterdam.”
POEMS
Diane Seuss 42 “Romantic Poetry”
Maya Phillips 62 “Before Notre Dame Burned, We Went on Vacation”
COVER
Chris Ware “Lockdown”

DRAWINGS Mick Stevens, Anne Fizzard, Michael Maslin, David Ostow,

Dan Misdea, Ellis Rosen, Liana Finck, Frank Cotham, Jason Adam Katzenstein, P. C. Vey,
Maddie Dai, Patrick McKelvie, Brendan Loper, Tadhg Ferry SPOTS Marcellus Hall