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'The Power of a Name': Maya Lin on Making the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

“I made a conscious decision not to do any specific research on the Vietnam War and the political turmoil surrounding it. I felt that the politics had eclipsed the veterans, their service, and their lives. I wanted to create a memorial that everyone would be able to respond to, regardless of whether one thought our country should or should not have participated in the war. The power of a name was very much with me at the time, partly because of the Memorial Rotunda at Yale. In Woolsey Hall, the walls are inscribed with the names of all the Yale alumni who have been killed in wars. I had never been able to resist touching the names cut into these marble walls, and no matter how busy or crowded the place is, a sense of quiet, a reverence, always surrounds those names. Throughout my freshman and sophomore years, the stonecutters were carving in by hand the names of those killed in the Vietnam War, and I think it left a lasting impression on me…the sense of the power of a name.”

Maya Lin on the making of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in the New York Review of Books. Read more on veterans.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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How Other Political Reporters Felt About the Late Michael Hastings

“While Hastings would later speak of having received ‘the Lindsay Lohan Mean Girls’ treatment from other political journalists, of the half-dozen fellow reporters on the charter with whom I spoke, all expressed affection for Hastings. ‘The truth is he was parachuting in to do something all of us wish we can do and can’t,’ says one. ‘When someone comes in and says he’s not going to play by the rules, it touches a nerve, but also there’s respect.’”

Benjamin Wallace, in New York magazine, on the life and death of reporter Michael Hastings, and the conspiracy theories that have arisen since. Read more from Hastings.

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Photo via Blue Rider Press

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John Lennon on What Made the Beatles Successful

“‘We thought we were the best in Hamburg and Liverpool—it was just a matter of time before everybody else caught on. We were the best fucking group in the goddamn world … and believing that is what made us what we were.’”

-John Lennon, in a 1980 interview. Lennon is quoted in Andrew Romano’s 2013 story for The Daily Beast, which aims to debunk Malcolm Gladwell’s argument in Outliers that the Beatles made their success through thousands of hours of playing in Hamburg.

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Renata Adler on Criticism, and an Old Secret Recipe for 'Making It' as a Writer

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“Well, it used to be one way a young writer made it in New York. He would attack, in a small obscure publication, someone very strong, highly regarded, whom a few people may already have hated. Then the young writer might gain a small following. When he looked for a job, an assignment, and an editor asked, ‘What have you published?’ he could reply, ‘Well, this piece.’ The editor might say, ‘Oh, yeah, that was met with a lot of consternation.’ And a portfolio began. This isn’t the way it goes now. More like a race to join the herd of received ideas and agreement.

“But, too mean versus too nice? I don’t know. Nice criticism is good when it tells you something. A lot of negative ‘criticism’ isn’t criticism at all: it’s just nasty, ‘writerly’ cliché and invective.”

Renata Adler, in an interview with The Believer, on the state of criticism. Read more from The Believer in the Longreads Archive.

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Photo via stuffiread.org

The Non-Mysteries of the Female Orgasm

“My initial forays into oral sex were a crutch, a way of compensating for my sexual inadequacies, and they were approached with the assumption that cunnilingus was a poor man’s second to the joys and splendors of ‘real sex’–like many, I took it for granted that intercourse was the ‘right way’ for couples to experience orgasms. But, to my surprise, I discovered that the ‘way of the tongue’ was by no means inferior to intercourse; if anything, it was superior, in many cases the only way in which women were able to receive the persistent, rhythmic stimulation, outside of masturbation, necessary to achieve an orgasm. I quickly learned that oral sex is real sex, and later in life, when I happened to come across a copy of the seminal Hite Report on Female Sexuality, I was reassured to find that women consider oral sex to be ‘one of their most favorite and exciting activities; women mentioned over and over how much they loved it.’ When it comes to pleasure, there is no right or wrong way to have an orgasm–the only thing that’s wrong is to assume that women need or value them any less than men do.”

-From She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman, by Ian Kerner, Ph.D.. Read more in the Longreads Archive.

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Photo: ranieldiaz, Flickr

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Reading List: Amazing People for Desperate Times

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

I have a group of comedian friends; we go bowling every Wednesday and contribute to a magazine called The Annual. In the wake of recent personal misfortune, they’ve been a refuge for me. After spending time with them, I feel inspired. I listen to comedy podcasts, commit myself to books I haven’t quite finished, and make furtive jots in my journal.

Here are four pieces about people I don’t know who do the same thing.

“Tig Notaro And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Yet Somehow Completely Amazing Year.” (Sandra Allen, Buzzfeed, August 2013)

What an utter badass. I’m all about women, and women in comedy, and women in comedy getting the recognition they deserve. Tig had cancer and a breakup and a death in the family and wow, wow, wow, she leads this life of grace and humor. She has a dozen projects going. What a human.

“Now We Are Five.” (David Sedaris, The New Yorker, October 2013)

Weirdly, gay memoirists are my go-to after breakups (by which I mean Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris). My favorite Sedaris essays are about his family. Here, Sedaris forgoes his typical absurdism in favor of a more reflective piece on the recent suicide of his sister, Tiffany. He is funny and tender.

“The Rumpus Interview With John Jeremiah Sullivan.” (Greg Gerke, The Rumpus, April 2012)

I am equal parts inspired and intimidated (actually, far far far more intimidated) by JJS. He’s the “southern editor” for the Paris Review. Is that even a real position? I think the Paris Review invented it just for him, because he was too important to not have on staff. Think about it.

“Tavi Gevinson, Rookie.” (Duane Fernandez, Left Field Project, September 2013)

Is this a “longread?” No, and I don’t care. Tavi is incredibly inspiring, not just because of her youth, but because she Makes Things Happen for herself. She is artistic and energetic and makes me want to Make Things.

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The Future of Personal Data, Democracy, and Opting Out of Fitness Trackers

“People who say that tracking their fitness or location is merely an affirmative choice from which they can opt out have little knowledge of how institutions think. Once there are enough early adopters who self-track—and most of them are likely to gain something from it—those who refuse will no longer be seen as just quirky individuals exercising their autonomy. No, they will be considered deviants with something to hide. Their insurance will be more expensive. If we never lose sight of this fact, our decision to self-track won’t be as easy to reduce to pure economic self-­interest; at some point, moral considerations might kick in. Do I really want to share my data and get a coupon I do not need if it means that someone else who is already working three jobs may ultimately have to pay more? Such moral concerns are rendered moot if we delegate decision-making to ‘electronic butlers.’”

Evgeny Morozov, in MIT Technology Review, on the future of big data, privacy and what it means for democracy. Read more from Tech Review.

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Marriage, Equality and Household Chores

“RG: Sometimes when people talk about women and the workforce, they say a woman cannot truly be equal to a man unless she has her own income. What do you think?

“Mom: Well. Equality. What a word. When we choose go outside in the world, when we come home, we’re still mommy. The second shift starts. Equality doesn’t exist, period, even when you share the chores. Some days it can be 70/30 and other days it is 30/70. I don’t think that’s what we should be fighting for.

“RG: What should we be fighting for?

“Mom: Men participating more in the home, but it’s petty to say 50/50, because life doesn’t allow that.”

Roxane Gay’s interview with her mother about equality in marriage in The Hairpin.

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Photo: nostri-imago, Flickr

‘Dr. Don’ and the Haunting Story of a Community

E.A. Mann is an engineer and freelance writer living in Warren, R.I.

I’ve read just about every issue of The New Yorker for the past seven years, and despite all of the big, important journalism I’ve read in those pages, this minor-key piece about a small town druggist has resonated deepest with me.

As readers, we bring our pre-conceived ideas of what an article will be, and I assumed that this character study would pull back its camera and end as a commentary on the state of healthcare in America. But its author, entranced by his subject, instead burrows deeply into Dr. Don’s outsized life in the lonely town of Nucla (population: 700 and falling), where the lonely landscape causes “wives [to] leave the passenger’s side empty and sit in the middle of the front seat, close enough to touch their husbands.” What the author ends up with is a haunting study on community, regret, and the essential mystery of other people.

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Isaac Asimov's Rules for Writing and Revising

Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov. Photo: AP Images

“Over and over again, we are told about the importance of polishing, of revising, of tearing up, and rewriting. I got the bewildered notion that, far from being expected to type it right the first time, as Heinlein had advised me, I was expected to type it all wrong and get it right only by the thirty-second time, if at all.

“I went home immersed in gloom and the very next time I wrote a story, I tried to tear it up. I couldn’t make myself do it. So I went over to see all the terrible things I had done, in order to revise them. To my chagrin, everything sounded great to me. (My own writing always sounds great to me.) Eventually, after wasting hours and hours–to say nothing of suffering spiritual agony—I gave it up. My stories would have to be written the way they always were—and still are.

“What is it I am saying, then? That it is wrong to revise? No, of course not—anymore than it is wrong not to revise.”

-Revisions, by Isaac Asimov, in the collection Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy: 20 Dynamic Essays by the Field’s Top Professionals.