On the Gray Lakeshore

Between closing the October 17 issue and beginning work on the Election Issue, I spent five nights on a remote lake in Canada with four friends. Every morning and evening I’d sit on the dock and either watch the mists rise or count the seven sisters in the Pleiades. I wished on four shooting stars and swam in the cold, glass-smooth water.

I wanted our October 17 issue cover to hint at Simon Callow’s essay about Richard Sennett’s book about performers and performance and Verlyn Klinkenborg’s essay about oceans. I knew the photographer Jason Fulford had done interesting work in Key West, including some Paul Outerbridge–like assemblages, and his still life with a shell and red clown nose made for a weird and arresting cover image. Inside, I asked one of our frequent contributors, the Berlin-based artist Andrea Ventura, for a portrait of another of our frequent contributors, the Ireland-based writer Anne Enright, to accompany Christoper Tayler’s review of Enright’s latest novel, The Wren, the Wren. For Anahid Nersessian’s review of Fady Joudah’s new poetry collection, […], Montrealer Alain Pilon sent a finely wrought drawing. 

Geoff Mcfetridge repainted a 2019 sketch that I found on his Instagram account to illustrate Colin Thurbron’s review of two books about international borders. For Verlyn Klinkenborg’s piece about oceans, we found Full Moon (2023), a painting by Hiroki Kawanabe that evokes both the surface and depths of the seas. 
Michelle Mildenberg, who recently drew Tommy Orange for our July 18 issue, made a portrait of Jo Hamya for Julian Taranto’s review of her new novel The Hypocrite. For Hannah Gold’s review of Emergency, a collection of stories by Kathleen Alcott, the German illustrator Laura Breiling placed the author in a vitrine that is filled with, as Breiling explained, “all the exciting narratives [Alcott] creates in her books. It features the Mojave Desert, the chimpanzee on the bike, the astronaut, the androgynous bob, a chipped tooth.” It also echoes what Gold describes in her review as the memories of the narrator’s “past selves, distinct as a row of curios behind glass.”

I asked Jim McMullan, a master of performing-arts imagery, for a portrait of the sociologist, musician, and historian Richard Sennett for Simon Callow’s in-depth review of Sennett’s latest book, The Performer: Art, Life, Politics. McMullan turned in an unexpected and unusual depiction of Sennett in a spotlight, a dancer pirouetting in front of him. 

The series art in the issue, titled “Lineworks,” is by Karen Radford, an artist and printmaker based in Kent, England.

Our election issue, full of essays by frequent contributors, is fronted by The Red Curtain (2021), a Paolo Ventura painting of a red curtain covering a doorway in a blue wall, with light dimly glowing from beneath its velvet pleats. A majestic portrait of Kamala Harris by Vivienne Flesher opens the issue, illustrating Patricia J. Williams’s essay on how the vice president dodges and deflects Trumps demented slings and arrows. This is followed by an essay by Laurence Tribe about the threat President Trump would pose to laws and rights, which is accompanied by American Fingerprints (2021), a painting by Mila Holtzeker Gamili that Jason Logan, a Canadian ink-maker, showed me.

I had a hunch that Yann Kebbi would make a strong portrait of Karl Ove Knausgaard for Christine Smallwood’s essay on his Morning Star series of novels. When I showed Smallwood’s editor, she remarked, “Wow, perfect. Gorgeous yet somehow unexpected, for this very familiar face.”

Our election symposium collected ten short essays covering a range of issues to do with the American politics. It took a week to land on two paintings that we agreed rhymed with the writing: Women Under the Stars (2022), by Katherine Bradford, and Shoppers (2024), by Aubrey Levinthal, seemed to sum up the hope and despair of the current moment.

For Christine Henneberg’s review of two books about American life after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we found a triptych that Paula Rego painted in 1998 in response to a failed referendum to legalize abortion in Portugal. It shows women undergoing illegal abortions in jarringly domestic settings. I have always loved Rachel Domm’s painting Bed Frame (2022), showing the foot of what looks like a hospital bed, so I was happy to have the chance to publish it alongside Adam Gaffney, David Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler’s essay about the problems and possible solutions for the American health care system.

Nicole Rudick reviewed Nicola Griffith’s two-book series about Saint Hilda of Whitby, and Leah Reena Goren painted the writer set against a monastery. Fintan O’Toole reviewed Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, and Laura Lannes submitted a few options: Lennon with either a Greek vase, an amphitheater, or, our ultimate choice, a Sicilian quarry.

Finally, to help pull the layouts together, the cover artist for our Fall Books issue, Julien Posture, contributed a series titled Structures, 2024. I’m wishing for a little structure, a little coherence, for this country after November 5.