Longreads

When walking through a city, or a suburb, or a section of forest, I feel an enormous sense of relief when I come upon a set of railroad tracks. It is as if the fears and doubts and anxieties of daily…

Singer Glen Campbell may have popularized the term “rhinestone cowboy” with his 1975 hit single, but the concept—country-music performers decked out in spangled suits—was…

The writers John Jeremiah Sullivan (Pulphead) and Geoff Dyer (Zona) recently met up in New York to discuss writing, Raising Arizona, and self-indulgence. The following is an edited transcript of…

ARETHA SILLSon the Late Great Townes Van Zandt. Photograph by Julie Cline What I remember most about the AP obituary that ran fifteen years ago tomorrow was its brevity — given that it was…

When Tim Leary called and asked if I’d pick up Genesis P‑Orridge on my way down from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I knew enough to be afraid—but not a hell of a lot more. As founder of industrial music pioneer Throbbing Gristle and cult-inspiring acid-house follow-up Psychic TV, P‑Orridge was known for soliciting mail-in pubic hair and semen samples from his fans, tattooing his wife’s labia, and staging mock abortions on video. When those tapes were interpreted by clueless police as real satanic murder rituals, it became impossible for Genesis and his family to return to England without danger of imprisonment.

By Adam Wilson / June 2, 2011 Jewcy loves trees! Please don't print!

Luc Sante has an eye for the forgotten, the weird, the lost, and the disappearing. The tenements where he lived on the Lower East Side in the seventies inspired him to see not just decay, but New York’s mummified past. With Low Life and other writings about the city, Sante became known as a sharp documenter of the unseen side of New York as the city raced toward development and gentrification in the eighties and nineties.