The Longreads Blog

Our Memories Are Not What They Used to Be

Image by Esther Vargas (CC BY-SA 2.0)

When was the last time you had to memorize a telephone number? For me, that would be more than six years ago, when we moved to another country and my wife got a new phone. Our relation to our memories in the age of unlimited digital storage is far more complicated, though. At the New Statesman, Sophie McBain explores the ways, both subtle and startling, in which the rise of digital media and smartphones has altered our ability — and willingness — to remember:

For thousands of years, human beings have relied on stone tablets, scrolls, books or Post-it notes to remember things that their minds cannot retain, but there is something profoundly different about the way we remember and forget in the internet age. It is not only our memory of facts that is changing. Our episodic memory, the mind’s ability to relive past experiences — the surprising sting of an old humiliation revisited, the thrill and discomfort of a first kiss, those seemingly endless childhood summers — is affected, too. The average Briton now spends almost nine hours a day staring at their phone, computer or television, and when more of our lives are lived on screen, more of our memories will be formed there. We are recording more about ourselves and our experiences than ever before, and though in the past this required deliberate effort, such as sitting down to write a diary, or filing away a letter, or posing for a portrait, today this process can be effortless, even unintentional. Never before have people had access to such comprehensive and accurate personal histories — and so little power to rewrite them.

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Why Verizon’s Former Pitchman Is Working for Sprint

You might have noticed that actor Paul Marcarelli, who played a memorable role as Verizon’s “Test Man” for many years, has begun to star in commercials for Sprint, a rival telecommunications company. Why the switch? Some insight can be found in a 2011 profile of Marcarelli by Spencer Morgan in The Atlantic:

Among other things, his initial five-year contract had prohibited him from doing any other commercial work and stipulated that he not discuss any aspect of the Test Man campaign, including the particulars of his contract. (He is still reluctant to go into detail, since he remains under contract with the company.) A 2003 article in Ad Age—titled “Verizon Keeps ‘Test Man’ on Short Leash”—noted that the cellular firm “adamantly maintains … that the actor who plays [Test Man] should certainly not be ‘heard.’” (Indeed, Verizon had declined to verify Marcarelli’s identity even after Ad Age revealed it, in 2002.) The contract was amended in 2006 to include language articulating Marcarelli’s right to promote his own projects, but he still felt hemmed in by the need to protect the character—and with it, his income.

After nine years, Marcarelli was informed via email that Verizon was taking their advertising in a different direction, and Marcarelli was free to pursue other projects.

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Who Is the Man on the Moor?

Photo of Saddleworth Moor by Smabs Sputzer (CC BY 2.0)

In an immersive BBC News story that unfolds on screen like a true detective case, Jon Manel tells the tale of a man found dead in Saddleworth Moor, in Peak District National Park in Northern England, last December. A cyclist found him in a peculiar position, in clothing inappropriate for a walk, and with no belongings or forms of identification.

Six months later, after tracing his final route across England from London to Manchester with CCTV footage, and examining the few clues the man left behind — including a small container holding strychnine, a poison — detectives have been unable to identify him, or figure out why he traveled 200 miles to die on the moor.

Why did the man travel all the way to the moorland track where he was found? Why there? Why poison? Why strychnine?

Some count the area where the body was discovered as being part of Saddleworth Moor.

It is very popular, especially on a bright summer’s day. Not only walkers but cyclists and climbers come here, and sailors on Dovestone Reservoir.

But it is also a place associated with a number of deaths over the years.

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What Ever Happened to ‘The Most Liberated Woman in America’?

All Illustrations by Michael Tunk

Alex Mar | Atlas Obscura | June 2016 | 27 minutes (6,812 words)

 

Atlas ObscuraOur latest Exclusive is a new story by Alex Mar, author of the book Witches of America, co-funded by Longreads Members and published by Atlas Obscura.

I am standing in the living room of a wood-paneled modular house out in the Nevada desert. Alongside me is Barbara Williamson, once called “the most liberated woman in America”; and slinking toward us, across the grayed-out carpeting, is a large, muscular, wild animal.

Now 78, Barbara had driven me here in a massive red pickup. The plan was to make tea and have a good talk in her office (just past the meditation room). But first, she wanted to introduce me to someone.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

Sure.

I followed Barbara through the kitchen.

Peggy Sue,” she called out gently. “Are you awake? Peggy Sue…”

We turned the corner into the living room, and that’s when I saw her. Her eyes are huge and almond-shaped, her ears point upwards (a signature of the breed), and her paws are striking in their size. Peggy Sue is a Siberian lynx, over 60 pounds, with powerful legs and sharp, two-inch-long canine teeth. She has not been de-clawed. I’d been aware of this fact, but only in this moment does it truly register: Barbara shares her home with what is, more or less, a small tiger.

“I wanted the wildness,” Barbara says. “I have a streak in me that just has a lot of wild desires, and it makes me feel really good to be accepted by a wild animal—I don’t know for what reasons. Back to the old motto: ‘If it feels good, do it!’”

Barbara, with her close-cut, bright-white hair and fuchsia lipstick, in light blue jeans and an ’80s-graphic parachute jacket, strokes the thick fur on the animal’s back and invites me to do the same. As we stand closer, each of us stroking Peggy Sue’s flanks, Barbara tells me they sleep together in the bed at night, sometimes curled up around one another.

Nearer now, the lynx looks a little raggedy, her skin a little loose, her long tail capped with two strange clumps of fur. She recently turned 20 years old—that’s how long ago Barbara retired to the small desert town of Fallon, Nevada, with her husband John. Out here on their 10-acre plot, the two created a spontaneous, guerilla-style sanctuary for “big cats.” Gradually, though, the creatures died of old age: three cougars, four bobcats, two tigers, two Barbary lions, a serval, two lynxes—and finally, three years and one month ago (Barbara keeps count), John himself. And now Barbara lives alone, with a single exotic animal, elderly herself, as her closest companion.

The lynx butts its head up against my legs.

“That’s a love gesture,” Barbara says.

The enormous cat does it again—two, three, four more times. I can feel the size and weight of her skull as she pushes me.

I’m aware that the affection she gives she can take away in a second. Read more…

How to Report on the Life of a 13-Year-Old

There must be few journalistic feats more difficult than getting inside the head of a teenager. But with “13, Right Now,” Washington Post staff writer Jessica Contrera joins the ranks of reporters who have skillfully chronicled the lives of children and teens, including Susan Orlean (read her classic Esquire piece, “The American Man, Age 10”) and more recently, Andrea Elliott, whose “Invisible Child” for the New York Times in 2013 documented the life of an 11-year-old homeless girl named Dasani.

Contrera’s story focuses on Katherine, 13, whose life has been upended by the death of her mother, and whose world seems to increasingly exist inside her phone—through apps like Instagram and Snapchat. (As an #old myself, seeing Katherine’s life revolve around her social networks is shocking only in the way it mirrors the screen addiction of the American grown-up. It practically begs for the return of the “I learned it by watching you” meme.)

I spoke to Contrera about her story, which is one in an ongoing series (“The Screen Age”) that the Post will publish throughout the summer. Read more…

Muhammad Ali: Literary Muse

Earlier this year, on the occasion of the release of Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts, Davis Miller’s second biography of Muhammad Ali, Financial Times political columnist Janan Ganesh considered the question of what made Ali such an appealing subject for so many writers. Read more…

Celebrate Pride: Stories About LGBTQ Parenthood

I. Coming off a seven-hour shift at the bookstore where I work, I texted my boyfriend something like “I cannot handle the idea of coming home and finishing my reading list, I am so tired, I cannot stay up late tonight, pity me,” except with more capital letters and swear words. He suggested, gently, that I divide the MEGA HUGE OMG IT’S PRIDE MONTH reading list/information dump I planned into several smaller segments, one for each week this month. (He’s pretty smart.) That’s what you have to look forward to this June: I’ll take a particular aspect of community (family, religion, history, etc.) and apply it within a queer framework. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Illustration by: Oliver Munday for The New Yorker

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

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Can Clinton’s Campaign Take Control of the Narrative in Time?

Image by Gage Skidmore

The idea that, at this point, there is some version of Hillary Clinton that we haven’t seen before feels implausible. Often, it feels like we know too much about her. She has been around for so long — her story, encompassing political intrigue and personal drama, has been recounted so many times — that she can seem a fictional character. To her critics, she is Lady Macbeth, to her adherents, Joan of Arc. As a young Hillary hater, I often compared her to Darth Vader — more machine than woman, her humanity ever more shrouded by Dark Side gadgetry. These days, I think of her as General Leia: No longer a rebel princess, she has made a wry peace with her rakish mate and her controversial hair and is hard at work, mounting a campaign against the fascistic First Order.

– Rebecca Traister followed Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail for this profile in New York magazine. With access afforded to few journalists, she saw both sides of the narrative made flesh: the stiff, loud, pedantic arena performer and the engaged, relaxed (yes, relaxed!), nose-to-the-grindstone public servant.

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This Is to Mother You: On Caring for a Toxic Parent in Her Greatest Time of Need

Illustration by: Kjell Reigstad

Jane Demuth | Longreads | May 2016 | 11 minutes (2,632 words)

I don’t panic on the afternoon in August 2012 that my sister calls and tells me that our mother has gone insane and her boyfriend has rushed her to the ER. For the full four-week duration of her hospital stay, I don’t feel much of anything for her. Instead, driving to the hospital that first afternoon, I tell myself to keep my ears open in case she slips and says something important and true.

Three months before, she was diagnosed; two months before, she began treatment. Breast cancer, ductal carcinoma in situ, stage two, one sentinel lymph node affected, ER/PR/HER2 negative, BRCA gene double negative. I advised her on what to tell her doctor about her family history so Medicare would pay for the genetic test. She’s prescribed a lumpectomy followed by six months of chemo followed by radiation.

She tells me these things. She shares these details with me, the same way she did twelve years ago when she had an abnormal Pap result, compelling me to consider a part of her body I’m even more reluctant to think about than her breasts. She sends me her path lab reports, as though I were the parent and she was sending me her report cards to hang on the refrigerator. I don’t know how to ask her to stop. I understand all of these details. I analyze cancer data for a living in collaboration with some of the foremost epidemiologists in the world. I’ve been at my job for 13 years. I’ve long since finished my work on endometrial and ovarian cancer, and I’m now branching out from the cervical cancer projects that were my sole focus for almost a decade; breast cancer has become my new specialty. My mother has had a knack for developing personal connections with the cancers that I study.

And for reasons that have never been clear to me, my company has always assigned me to the lady cancers. The irony in this has been coming in waves which are about to break on my shores—my birth certificate describes me as male, and up to this point I have grudgingly embodied that identity as well as I could. Less than a year after my mother’s hospitalization, though, in June of 2013, I’ll have begun my physical transition to female, something I’ve secretly wanted to do since early childhood, long before I could articulate it. Read more…