Apocalypse now in New York

I told myself I wouldn’t be as shocked and disappointed as I was in 2016. But I was. Also this week: American power brokers and music’s perfect communion.

By Erica Wagner

This is as good a time as any to think about the nature of power – who has it and why, and what it takes to discover the machinations of acquiring it. At the New-York Historical Society on the afternoon of 6 November, I leaned in close to a glass display case. Four years ago, the city’s oldest museum acquired the papers of Robert Caro, perhaps the world’s greatest living biographer: at 89 he is hard at work on the fifth and final volume of his life of Lyndon Baines Johnson. On display until 2 February is a brilliant installation, “Robert Caro’s The Power Broker at 50”, marking a half-century since this most influential political debut was published. Barack Obama, who awarded Caro the 2009 National Humanities Medal, was “mesmerised” by the book when he read it at 22; “It helped to shape how I think about politics,” he said.

The Power Broker charts the life of Robert Moses, an unelected official who held sway over New York City for 40 years and whose decisions still impact the lives of New Yorkers every single day. Caro spent a decade investigating what enabled Moses to shape the city, often with scant regard for its poorest inhabitants. Displayed before me was the letter Moses wrote in response to the book’s serialisation in the New Yorker in August 1974; to say the least he was not happy, taking issue even with the book’s title, claiming not to understand what was meant by it. There is a handwritten annotation in Caro’s writing beside Moses’s words. “If Mr M tells me which of the two words he doesn’t understand, I will be glad to enlighten him.”

The morning after

I’d spent much of the day before telling myself I wouldn’t be as shocked and disappointed as I was on the morning of 9 November 2016; and you may not be surprised to hear that I was. It’s true that across New York City – where I still vote – Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump 68 per cent to 30 per cent, but in the Bronx and Queens, Trump narrowed his margin of defeat by more than 20 percentage points compared to four years ago. After I left the New-York Historical Society, I walked down the edge of Central Park to Columbus Circle and passed a man hawking bright red Maga hats. “Get ’em here, get ’em here!” he yelled. There were no takers that I could see: small consolation.

Fire and fury

To underline the apocalyptic tone, we woke at the weekend to the smell of burning, a haze blanketing the otherwise bright blue sky. A brushfire had broken out in Prospect Park in Brooklyn; with a view over the Hudson towards the steel of the George Washington Bridge, we could see smoke pouring from a fire in the Palisades, just across the river in New Jersey. The city is under a drought watch for the first time in over two decades after the driest October on record; it’s been warmer than I ever recall at this time of year. New Yorkers have watched wildfires in California and Canada and perhaps felt a little smug; but change is coming for us all.

Curious George

And yet we search for hope and inspiration. George Saunders, in his latest post on Substack (subscribe to Story Club and you won’t be sorry) talks about the duty of an artist to be interested, to be curious, to attempt to understand, no matter what. His own political leanings mean it’s challenging for him to comprehend the choice his fellow citizens have made, but it’s up to him to try. “If I don’t understand it, that’s on me (as a thinker, as a writer). (If trees suddenly started walking around, I’d want to understand that, once the shock died down. Because, you know… it’s interesting. And that’s my job, to be curious about things that happen.)”

Nothing but blue skies

That curiosity, that sense of passionate interest and engagement, doesn’t only come through words. At the end of the week, I took myself to Dizzy’s Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s beautiful and intimate venue with views across the Manhattan skyline, to hear Bill Charlap play. Charlap is one of the greatest jazz pianists of his generation, a perfectly modern performer who is also steeped in the history of his form. We sipped dry martinis as he played Jimmy McHugh’s “On the Sunny Side of the Street”, Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies” and Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale” before closing with a haunting rendition of Harold Arlen’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

These selections, uniquely interpreted by Charlap, spoke to the creative and open spirit of America at her best. At the end of that final song, so beloved by everyone lucky enough to be in that room, he held his hands over the piano keys in silence, and we all sat together in perfect communion, joined by music, by the gift of an artist and the love of his work.