Longreads

“Lyndon Baty and the Robot That Saved Him.” Luke...

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:35:00 -0400

“Lyndon Baty and the Robot That Saved Him.” Luke Darby, Dallas Observer

Reading List: Brave New Internet

Sun, 19 May 2013 13:54:23 -0400

Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps.

1. “The Vice Guide to the World.” (Lizzie Widdicombe, The New Yorker, 8 April 2013)

“My big thing was I want you to do stupid in a smart way and smart in a stupid way.” Vice pioneers methods of marketing, advertising and reporting while trying to mesh investigative journalism with its party image.

2. “‘There is no news industry’: An interview with media theorist Clay Shirky.” (Martin Eirmann, The European, August 2013)

Shirky talks about the nebulous definition of the journalist, the perilous combination of print and online news services, and the relationship between story and audience. Warning: somewhat jargon-y.

3. “The Secular C.S. Lewis: Neil Postman’s Unlikely Influence on Evangelicals.” (Arthur W. Hunt III. Second Nature Journal, May 2013)

Media theory classes have found an unlikely home in the hearts of Christian college students and other evangelical, primarily Reformed Christians. (I should know—the epigraph of this piece is from my Media Ecology professor, to whom I credit my deep unease toward Google Glass.)

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Longreads Guest Pick: Emily Schultz on Roxane Gay and Tin House

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:35:45 -0400

Emily Schultz is the co-publisher of Joyland Magazine and the author of The Blondes, forthcoming from St. Martin’s-Thomas Dunne in 2014. She lives in Brooklyn.

“In writing about Benjamin Percy’s werewolf novel, Red Moon, Roxane Gay’s review transforms into a fascinating essay with bite. She sums up the challenge authors face when examining the militarization of everyday life since 2001: ‘It’s a tricky thing to address pressing issues of the day in fiction without making prose do the work of preaching.’ Artistic success has eluded great authors who took the subject head on and Gay suggests that allegory is the platform that can let the author speak loudest. When I started writing my novel The Blondes I didn’t know that is was about these same subjects but by the time it was finished the world had crept in.

“Since writing a novel about a worldwide calamity and how its narrative unspools through the media, I’ve been haunted by its resonances with real events, but tragedy and unspeakable crime have always been documented. Today, we crowd source reflexively filmed camera footage to solve cases, but in the aftermath of the Second World War a Hollywood contingent hunted down and sifted through the propagandists’ own footage to build evidence against the Nazis for the Nuremberg trials. Budd Schulberg was a morally complicated screenwriter and author of the classic Hollywood novel What Makes Sammy Run? In ‘Budd and Leni’ Bruce Handy tells the story of how Schulberg arrested director Leni Riefenstahl. The story is complex, the material is harrowing, and the facts sometimes blur into strange humor, such as the Communist guard who is also a film critic.”

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Students, Professors: We Want Your Best #College #Longreads

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:14:14 -0400

Throughout May and June, a new generation of reporters, writers, editors, and essayists make their way out of school and into the professional world. They come bearing clips, work samples produced for class or during an internship. Hundreds of media outlets at colleges and universities across the country publish student work, and an equal number of professors, instructors, and advisors help students report, write, and edit their best journalism. We’d like to encourage those writers to produce more and better work, and introduce these new voices to a wider audience of readers—and maybe even future employers and mentors.

To help in this effort, we’ve teamed up with Aileen Gallagher, assistant professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, to help search for and share outstanding student work.

Students, writers, publishers, professors: We need your help to find and share the best work of the past year.

If you’ve read (or written) something this school year, just tag it #college #longreads on Twitter or Tumblr, or email it to aileen@longreads.com.

Student publications are the easiest and best place to find college #longreads, like Mary Kenney’s account of an Indian sex worker, published earlier this year by Indiana University’s INSIDE magazine. Or Project Wordsworth, the outstanding new pay-what-you-want experiment from Michael Shapiro and students at Columbia University.

Sometimes a piece that a student writes for class, such as the one Syracuse University grad student Danielle Preiss wrote about high suicide rates among Bhutanese refugees, lands in a professional outlet. And of course, we’ll also tout good work produced by students as part of a fellowship or internship, like Columbia undergrad Jack Dickey’s investigation for Deadspin about Manti Te’o.

The only rules for #college #longreads are: Stories should be over 1,500 words and written by a student enrolled in a college or university at the time of publication.

Share stories worth reading by tagging them #college #longreads.

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Know of a writer or publication we should keep an eye on? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Our Longreads Member Pick: Someone Could Get Hurt (Chapter 1), by Drew Magary

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:00:00 -0400

For this week’s Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share the first chapter of Drew Magary’s new memoir on fatherhood, Someone Could Get Hurt (Gotham Books). Magary, who writes for Deadspin and GQ, has been featured on Longreads many times in the past, and he explained how his latest book came together:

I was in the middle of writing a second novel that would hopefully earn me a billion dollars in movie franchise royalties when my third kid was born. There were complications. I find that ‘complications’ is the universal euphemism for anything bad that happens during the birth and early life of an infant. It can mean anything, really: birth defects, mental illness, a lost limb, an ambulance driven into a tree, etc.

If you’ve ever experienced complications with a baby, you know that it immediately makes any other difficulty you’ve ever experienced in life seem harmless by comparison. Your life can be neatly separated into Before Complications and After Complications. They always say that having a kid changes you, but that’s a lie. It’s having a kid on the brink of dying that changes you.

So I had to table the novel for a bit and get this out of my system. I had to write about my third kid, and I had to write about my family as a whole, about this whole unit of people that needed to be strong enough to go through what we were about to go through. And that’s how Someone Could Get Hurt came to be. This is the first chapter.

Read an excerpt here.

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Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Your Latest Fiction Picks: Lorrie Moore, Tor.com and Taddle Creek

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:43:00 -0400

In case you’ve missed them, here’s a quick list of some of the most recent #longreads #fiction picks from the community:

1. “The Side Sleeper” (Emily Schultz, Taddle Creek)

RT @taddlecreek: “The Side Sleeper”: a longish short story by @manualofstyle (Emily Schultz). taddlecreekmag.com/the-side-sleep… #longreads #fiction

— Joyland Magazine (@joylandfiction)

May 9, 2013

2. “We Have Always Lived On Mars”(Cecil Castellucci, Tor.com)

.@misscecil’s “We Have Always Lived On Mars”bit.ly/13rR9bs #longreads #fiction

— alexanderchee (@alexanderchee)

May 7, 2013

3. “Paper Losses”(Lorrie Moore, The New Yorker, 2006)

Lorrie Moore’s ‘Paper Losses’ newyorker.com/archive/2006/1… via @newyorker #Fiction #Longreads #LorrieMoore #ShortStory

— Pravesh Bhardwaj (@AuteurPravesh)

May 13, 2013

4. “Burning Bright” (Ron Rash, Ecotone Journal, 2008)

Ron Rash’s ‘Burning Bright’ ecotonejournal.com/index.php/arti…#Fiction #Longreads #RonRash #ShortStory

— Pravesh Bhardwaj (@AuteurPravesh)

May 4, 2013

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Longreads Guest Pick: Michael Macher on 'Putin's Rasputin'

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:01:17 -0400

Michael is the associate publisher at The Awl network.

“Earlier this week, Vladislav Surkov—also known by his nickname, the ‘gray cardinal’—resigned (i.e. was fired) from his position as a leading cabinet official in Medvedev’s government. As a character, Surkov is endlessly fascinating. On one hand he’s a ruthless political operator whose genius maneuvers have drawn comparisons to Machiavelli. On the other he’s a master ironist who has turned Russia in to his own ‘postmodern theatre’. This October 2011 profile by Peter Pomerantsev in The London Review of Books is easily one of the best things written about him and the strange state of Russian politics in general. Pomerantsev beautifully weaves together fragments of Surkov’s personal biography with broader cultural observations to make deep points about power politics in Russia. I really, really enjoyed this piece and I hope you do too.”

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Reading List: Mother's Day

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:22:00 -0400

Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps.

With Mother’s Day on the horizon, I chose “mothers/relationship with moms” as the theme of my list this week:

1. My Mom (Mary H. K. Choi, Aeon, April 2013)

A deceptively simple title belies a gorgeous, funny, sometimes dark essay in which Choi attempts to communicate her strange affection for her mother.

2. The Love of My Life (Cheryl Strayed, The Sun, Sept. 2002)

The indomitable Strayed explores the unexpected intersection of sex, death, grief, marriage, and, above all, her overwhelming love for her mother.

3. The Beautiful Daughter: How My Korean Mother Gave Me the Courage to Transition (Andy Marra, The Huffington Post, Nov. 2012)

Andy Marra returns to Korea to find her biological family and ponders whether or not to reveal that she’s transgender.

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What are your favorite stories about mom? Share them in the comments below.

(Photo: Böhringer Friedrich, Wikimedia Commons)

UPDATE: Here are some additional Mother’s Day recommendations from you:

I went rogue and made my own Mothers’ Day @longreads list. ow.ly/kSx9D

— simone eastman (@SimoneEastman)

May 9, 2013

My most favorite mother essays # 1: Baby Weight by @cherylstrayed brainchildmag.com/2013/02/from-t… #longreads

— Molly Beer (@tornmap)

May 10, 2013

My most favorite mother essays # 2: Moonrise by Penny Wolfson theatlantic.com/past/docs/issu… #longreads

— Molly Beer (@tornmap)

May 10, 2013

My most favorite mother essays # 3: Private Ceremonies by Trish O’Connorbit.ly/15Uf7QV #longreads

— Molly Beer (@tornmap)

May 10, 2013

Longreads Guest Pick: BKLYNR's Favorite Brooklyn Stories

Wed, 08 May 2013 12:46:47 -0400

Thomas Rhiel and Raphael Pope-Sussman are the founding editors of BKLYNR, a new online publication that features in-depth journalism—including more than a few #longreads—about Brooklyn.

Thomas’s pick: “Brooklyn: The Sane Alternative,” by Pete Hamill in New York magazine

It’s 2013—three long years since New York magazine asked “What was the hipster?”—and yet there are still people for whom Brooklyn means Bedford Avenue. It’s depressing that so played out a trope could displace, in the popular imagination, everything else that the borough is: more populated than Manhattan and three times as massive; a patchwork of neighborhoods, some of which, incredibly, aren’t Williamsburg or Park Slope; and a place whose history stretches as far back as the country’s.

A restorative for the trend piece du jour is Pete Hamill’s “Brooklyn: The Sane Alternative,” a New York magazine cover story from 1969. It’s an oldie but goodie, a look at the borough’s bounce back from what Hamill sees as its postwar (and post-Dodgers) decline. As a snapshot of an evolving Brooklyn from decades ago, the story’s a fascinating read today. And Hamill’s wide-angle view of the borough’s complexities, as well as his celebration of its energy and diversity, still rings true.

Raphael’s pick: “Gentrified Fiction,” by Elizabeth Gumport in n+1

There’s a story many Brooklynites tell in which the moment of their arrival in a neighborhood coincides with the last breath of its “authentic” life. Those who came after, this story goes, never knew the “real” neighborhood. They missed the junkies who hung out on the stoops down the block, the bodega on the corner that sold 40s, the drop ceilings and vinyl siding and linoleum. It’s a seductive story, to hear and to tell. But it’s also a destructive story—really a myth—that valorizes an arbitrary authenticity at the expense of a more complex understanding of the place we call home. What is the “real” Brooklyn—what is the “real” anywhere?

If you’re interested in interrogating that question, I strongly recommend Elizabeth Gumport’s 2011 essay “Gentrified Fiction,” which explores the fixation on authenticity in contemporary literature about Brooklyn.

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Our friend Mike Deri Smith has launched a new site, inspired by...

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:11:08 -0400

Our friend Mike Deri Smith has launched a new site, inspired by Longreads, for finding and sharing great videos over 3 minutes— @watchlongviews and #longviews. We asked him to share a pick from this past week’s selections, and give us some backstory on the site:

“I read all day every day so when I want to switch up the pace, or when I eat lunch at my keyboard, I yearn for something great to watch. Viral videos are too unsatisfying, TV is too hit-and-miss, and full-length documentaries are too long. So I watch the growing amount of brilliant longform news video being produced with excitement. In the spirit of Longreads, I’ve called these videos #longviews. I’m now sharing the best of them @watchlongviews and through a weekly newsletter. You can share what you find with #longviews.”

Above: One of Mike’s recent picks, “Secrets of The Dead—Bugging Hitler’s Soldiers ” (13 min.) from PBS.

Our Longreads Member Pick: My Body Stopped Speaking to Me, by Andrew Corsello

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:21:51 -0400

For this week’s Member Pick, we’re excited to share “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” a personal story from GQ writer and National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello about a near-death experience. The piece was first published in GQ in 1995. Corsello explains:

I was circling the drain in the spring of 1995—convalescent, out of money, literally within days of quitting the business—when David Kamp, a friend from college who’d become a senior editor at GQ, called to ask if I’d be interested in a staff-writing job. ‘You know I’m damaged goods, right?’ I asked. He didn’t, but made things happen anyway. The day I arrived at GQ, David introduced me to the mag’s longtime editor, Art Cooper, an old-school manly man’s man who’d have insisted on christening my arrival with a hard drink or three (even though it was 11:00 a.m.) had David not preempted it. ‘Now, Art,’ David explained as Art took my hand, ‘you can’t take it personally when Andrew declines the drink you’re going to offer him—he’s been told by doctors he can never drink again.’ Art asked why. Over the next 15 minutes, I told him the bizarre story of my near-death from liver failure six months before. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That’s your first piece for the mag!’ At which point I reflexively wondered, ‘But what’s the angle?’ And, answering myself, said, ‘How about, “If I were in an HMO, I’d be dead”’? Before I could finish my next sentence, Cooper said, ‘Nah, just write the story.’ But what about, you know, the health care angle… ‘Huh?’ Cooper said. ‘Forget that. Just…write the story, like you just told it.’ But what about… We went back and forth several more times, with me burping up inane buzz-crap like ‘nut graf’ and ‘policy relevance’ and Cooper saying ‘Write the story.’ Finally, half laughing, half pissed, he growled, ‘Just write the fucking story.’ So I left his office, sat at my new desk, created a new file, sat staring at the screen for several minutes and then realized: The story was already written, and written as well as it ever could be (at least by me), in my journal. Creating this piece, which Kamp edited, was almost entirely a matter of splicing journal entries together.

Even now it amazes and annoys me: that until the moment Art Cooper told me to write the fucking story, it had never even occurred to me to use in my published work the voice in which I had been speaking to myself for years. That is, it hadn’t occurred to me to publish work…in my own voice. How stupid is that? All this is to say that this story, or rather the editorial injunction that birthed it, taught me that a vivid writing voice is less a matter of talent—far less—than license. Dave Kamp’s headline for this piece plays at multiple levels.

Read an excerpt here.

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Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

“Deep Inside Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco”...

Mon, 06 May 2013 14:36:24 -0400

“Deep Inside Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco” —Austin Carr, Fast Company

Longreads Guest Pick: Pravesh Bhardwaj on Alice Munro's 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain'

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:56:00 -0400

Today’s guest pick comes from frequent Longreads contributor Pravesh Bhardwaj:

“I am a filmmaker based in Mumbai. These days I am writing a screenplay, which might become my next film. I spend more time ‘trying to write’ than doing the real writing. So I have made a deal with myself: Read a piece of fiction I have not read before, and read it online so that I don’t run away from the computer—and then go back and take another stab at writing. The idea is to relax in front of the screen that scares me as I have not written enough on the day.

“Alice Munro’s ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’ (The New Yorker, 1999) is one of the finest stories I have ever read. It is about Grant and Fiona, who have been married for many decades, and how their relationship changes once Fiona gets institutionalized as she is in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. I am yet to see Sarah Polley’s film adaptation (Away From Her). Maybe I will, after I have read the story a few times—maybe never. Yes, I love the story that much.”

Read the story here.

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articles read & loved no. 51

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:27:58 -0400

dietcoker:

Marin Cogan’s excellent profile of rising tennis star Sloane Stephens

The Dark Side of Audrey Hepburn

I Invited Homeless Addicts to my House for Thanksgiving Dinner (I’ve been reading through the profiles of addicts living in Hunts Point, Bronx, compiled by Chris Arnade.)

Amber chronicles coming to terms with her hair in Going Natural.

“My Father, the Good Nazi.” Philippe Sands,...

Mon, 06 May 2013 12:15:05 -0400

“My Father, the Good Nazi.” Philippe Sands, Financial Times

My Top 5 #Longreads on the Business of Film, Music and Books

Sun, 05 May 2013 13:53:00 -0400

Mark Armstrong (that’s not him above) is the founder of Longreads, and editorial director for Pocket.

This past week’s Steven Soderbergh speech on “The State of the Cinema” isn’t as big a downer for film lovers as these choice quotes might have you believe:

“Shouldn’t we be spending the time and resources alleviating suffering and helping other people instead of going to the movies and plays and art installations? When we did Ocean’s Thirteen the casino set used $60,000 of electricity every week. How do you justify that? Do you justify that by saying, the people who could’ve had that electricity are going to watch the movie for two hours and be entertained—except they probably can’t, because they don’t have any electricity, because we used it.”

Or:

“When people are more outraged by the ambiguous ending of The Sopranos than some young girl being stoned to death, then there’s something wrong.”

Soderbergh does offer some encouraging news about the amount of independent films being distributed:

“In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films…”

The downside, of course, is that it’s harder to get them seen:

“…and yet, 10 years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard.”

For further reading, the Soderbergh speech reminded me of a few other excellent #longreads about the business of art:

1. “Letter to Emily White at All Songs Considered” (David Lowery, June 2012)

Lowery, the founder of bands including Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, paints a bleak picture of the state of the music industry, particularly when it comes to professional studio musicians.

2. “The Business of Literature” (Richard Nash, VQR, Spring 2013)

Nash offers historical context for those worried about the future of books: “Book culture is in far less peril than many choose to assume, for the notion of an imperiled book culture assumes that book culture is a beast far more refined, rarified, and fragile than it actually is.”

3. “Some Thoughts on Our Business” (Jeffrey Katzenberg, Letters of Note, 1991)

Katzenberg’s memo to colleagues at Disney, which in addition to having allegedly inspired the memo in Jerry Maguire, also addresses the blockbuster mentality.

4. “I’m for Sale” (Genevieve Smith, Elle, April 2013)

Smith searches for a balance between creative fulfillment and financial security.

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(Photo by Thore Siebrands, via Wikimedia Commons)

“A Trip to Japan in Sixteen Minutes.” Michelle...

Sun, 05 May 2013 13:36:39 -0400

“A Trip to Japan in Sixteen Minutes.” Michelle Legro, The Believer.

Longreads Guest Pick: Baxter Holmes on 'The Prophets of Oak Ridge'

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:09:00 -0400

Baxter covers the Celtics for The Boston Globe, which he joined in 2013 after spending three and a half years as a sports reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2009. He’s a proud Oklahoman from a no-stoplight town where humans are outnumbered by cow and buffalo:

“A nun. A super-secure nuclear-weapons facility. A break-in. Click-bait, all of that. All ingredients succinct enough for an enticing tweet, which these days count. But Dan Zak, one of the best in this racket, has far more than a wild premise; he also wrote the hell out of his piece, ‘The Prophets of Oak Ridge,’ in the Washington Post. It’s my favorite longread of the week. Exquisite reporting, beautiful pacing (and writing), but no overwriting—a key. The online layout is ‘Snow Fall’ sexy, and the illustrations set it apart. The story itself bounces chronologically off their suspenseful B&E, keeping you in real time while divulging just enough history—but not enough to bore you. Some stories are as fulfilling as a top-dollar steak, medium rare, with nice fixings on the side. This is one of them. (But no spoilers.) Well done, Zak. You took a gripping narrative and turned it topical by showing how much the U.S. doles out per year on nuclear weapons. You also made me care about these servants of God, especially Sister Megan. I now give a damn about their trial. In all, this is newspapers at their finest. Long live print—and print will live on with stories like this.”

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Now on Newsstands: Modern Farmer

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:22:43 -0400

One of our favorite parts about running Longreads is getting to know all the excellent magazine, book and online publishers out there producing great storytelling. We thought it would be fun to profile them—starting today with Modern Farmer. We spoke with deputy editor Reyhan Harmanci about their inaugural issue, out now.

Publication: Modern Farmer (inaugural issue)

Founded: April 2013

HQ: Hudson, New York

Editors: Ann Marie Gardner (Editor-in-Chief), Reyhan Harmanci (Deputy Editor), Andy Wright (Senior Editor), Jake Swearingen (Web Editor)

How did the magazine come together?

“The whole operation began when, a few years ago, Ann Marie was working for the New York Times and Monocle, and traveling a lot for stories. Living in upstate New York, she was surrounded by farmers, gardeners, people really connected to the food and the land; the fact that people everywhere were having the same conversations about food security, sustainability, localism, etc., surprised and inspired her. She began working on this in earnest about a year ago, and found an investor this fall. The editorial team (or part of it) began working in November.

“The basic idea behind MF is that knowing where your food comes from is extremely important — and, thanks in large part to climate change, so is self-reliance. We want to cover agriculture on a global scale, tell fascinating stories and also have fun. It doesn’t hurt that farms often have baby farm animals, key to any digital media operation.”

Tell us about the #longreads in the latest issue:

“Probably my favorite story in the magazine is by Jesse Hirsch (who has since come on as our staff writer) about the global wild pig explosion. It really needs to be read to be believed: boars are taking over the world and we can’t do anything to stop it. Less fun but extremely important is Mac McClelland’s story about humane slaughter—what does it even mean? How much should we care?”

Subscriptions: Print and digital

“Career Arc: Harrison Ford.” Alex Pappademas,...

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:56:15 -0400

“Career Arc: Harrison Ford.” Alex Pappademas, Grantland.