The Longreads Blog

Cultural Changes: A Reading List

September feels like a month of changes, to me. Growing up, the first day of school was my New Year. I made resolutions; I felt like a new person, at least for a little while. Today, I chose six stories about (possibly, eventually, hopefully, revolutionary) changes in television, fashion, religion and more.

1. Netflix Programming: “BoJack Horseman is the Funniest Show About Depression Ever.” (Margaret Lyons, Vulture, September 2014)

I’m still naive enough to think cartoons will always be lighthearted, despite the crudity of Family Guy and South Park. When the credits rolled on BoJack Horseman, I turned to my boyfriend, close to tears, and said, “That … that was really sad.” And that’s not a bad thing.

2. Supermodel Culture: “Will Model Chantelle Brown-Young Redefine What It Means to Be Beautiful?” (Isabel Slone, The Globe and Mail, September 2014)

Seeing the fashion blogger I used to follow in my tween years on the front cover of the style section of the Globe and Mail is a little surreal. Slone delivers an excellent piece on supermodel Brown-Young (a.k.a. Winnie Harlow), who has vitiligo and rocked the runway this September.

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The Pioneering Women Assigned to Program One of the Earliest Computers

After six weeks of training, the women returned to Penn, where they were given poster-size diagrams and charts describing ENIAC. “Somebody gave us a whole stack of blueprints, and these were the wiring diagrams for all the panels, and they said, ‘Here, figure out how the machine works and then figure out how to program it,’” explained McNulty. That required analyzing the differential equations and then determining how to patch the cables to connect to the correct electronic circuits. “The biggest advantage of learning the ENIAC from the diagrams was that we began to understand what it could and could not do,” said Jennings. “As a result we could diagnose troubles almost down to the individual vacuum tube.” She and Snyder devised a system to figure out which of the 18,000 vacuum tubes had burned out. “Since we knew both the application and the machine, we learned to diagnose troubles as well as, if not better than, the engineers. I tell you, those engineers loved it. They could leave the debugging to us.”

Snyder described making careful diagrams and charts for each new configuration of cables and switches. “What we were doing then was the beginning of a program,” she said, though they did not yet have that word for it.

Walter Isaacson, in Fortune, on the women who changed early computing forever—an excerpt from his new book The Innovators.

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Photo: U.S. Army, Wikimedia Commons

Cooking’s Eternal Struggle: Who Am I Doing This For?

I made my decision not to cook anymore two weeks ago, and I have stuck to it. I have a feeling I have done this before, but this time, I really mean it. I am tired of the struggle to win and impress, to impress even myself, to be engaged mentally with food, which, if I just forget about it, will probably just present itself to me anyway. Last night my boyfriend brought home prosciutto, melon, bread, some Saint- André cheese and a mixture of olives and feta in a little oil and vinegar that they sell at our local supermarket and which, along with just enough salad to ward off disease, I would be perfectly happy to live on.

I went to sleep rested, un-buoyed by success, and un-flattened by failure.

Sarah Miller, for Popula, on her love-hate relationship with cooking.

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Photo: reractedmoments, Flickr

What Keeps Anthony Bourdain Excited About Making His Show

Bourdain’s shows have grown more visually complex and cinematic over the years, using intricate editing and atmospheric slo-mo shots to add mystery and gravitas. Episodes are often directly inspired by Bourdain’s film passions. A season 2 trip into Tokyo’s nightlife underbelly–complete with segments on bondage and S&M–was informed by the work of Tokyo Fist director Shinya Tsukamoto, while the Shanghai episode currently unspooling on-screen tapped Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai as its key reference point. Bourdain usually picks the influences, but it’s up to the team to execute that vision. “Before we go out on a shoot, Tony will give us a homework assignment, which is about a dozen esoteric films,” says Brigden. “We become obsessed with those filmmakers. We live and breathe them.”

Bourdain is more than just Parts Unknown’s host, head writer, and executive producer; he is its creative engine, picking locations, teasing out themes, obsessing over narrative structure, and guiding its overall artistic vision. At one point while watching a meditative, beautifully shot Shanghai montage, he’s distracted by some incongruously funky background music. “I wish there was no bass,” he says to Brigden and Andrukanis. “It shouldn’t be danceable. It should be wistful.” It’s a small detail in a short segment from a single show, but it’s easy to see how that one tweak will transform the mood of the scene–and maybe even the whole episode.

That quest for excellence is a big part of what’s kept Bourdain excited about making a show with the same basic format for the past 14 years. He can be intense, but he constantly pushes the crew to reach toward the new. “We literally sit down and try to figure out, ‘What’s the most fucked-up thing we can do?’ ” he says, taking a swig from his industrial-size cup of light-and-sweet deli coffee. “ ’What haven’t we done that we can try?’ ”

— Anthony Bourdain, profiled this week in Fast Company. Says a producer who has worked with Bourdain for a long time: “He is fun, funny, smart, sardonic, and a pain in the fucking ass sometimes. But it’s a very collaborative process. He is challenging in all the best ways. He can outtalk, outwit, outhumor anybody who’s trying to argue with him, and sometimes that gets your ire up. But ultimately you take that ire and channel it into the show.”

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Photo: YouTube

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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

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‘God Help You if You Are Gay and Have the Audacity to Enjoy Yourself Too Much’

You pull up the news story and look at the bruised and bloody eye of the anonymous victim. You wonder if you know him. You feel a little guilty about just how glad you are that it isn’t you.

You’re disheartened that it happened so close to you. You’re disheartened that it can happen anywhere. You’re disheartened, but you’re ultimately not surprised.

People around you say they can’t believe this kind of thing can happen in 2014. None of the people who say this are gay. You think about how many times you’ve seen people stare at you on a date just a little too long. You remember all the times you’ve heard someone mutter faggot as you pass by. You remember walking home at night when you lived in the Gayborhood and seeing cars drive by filled with people who made the journey just to gawk at you. You are other, and people will always find ways to remind you, even if it’s subtle.

God help you if you are gay and have the audacity to enjoy yourself too much. Double that if you’re a gay man of color.

Zachary Wilcha, in a short essay on Untied.

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Photo: kurtbudiarto, Flickr

Interview: Caitlin Moran on the Working Class, Masturbation, and Writing a Novel

Jessica Gross | Longreads | Sept. 25, 2014 | 13 minutes (3,300 words)

Caitlin Moran has worked as a journalist, critic, and essayist in the U.K. for over two decades, since she was 16. In her 2011 memoir/manifesto, How to Be a Woman, she argued women should keep their vaginas hairy, said she has no regret over her own abortion, and advocated for the term “strident feminist.” Moran brings the same gallivanting, taboo-crushing spirit to her debut novel, How to Build a Girl, which follows Johanna Morrigan, a working class teenager, as she navigates her way toward adulthood. Morrigan shares a few traits with Moran, from her background and career path to her obsession with music and masturbation.

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As I read How to Build a Girl, I pictured you laughing uproariously to yourself as you were writing it. But in the acknowledgments, you say, “Writing a book is literally worse than giving birth to a baby—in hell.”

I wrote the acknowledgments in a welter of self-pity. I love writing—it’s the easiest thing in the world for me to do. But all through that summer, my children and husband would disappear and come back all covered in sand, having been to the beach while I sat at the table I’m at now, in the garden, chain smoking roll-up cigarettes, chain-drinking coffee. I was working so hard that I genuinely thought I’d have to go to the psychiatrist and get some valium prescribed to me. I’ve always been incredibly cheerful and laid-back, and that summer I was incredibly anxious and depressed, like my head was going to explode. There was one morning where I was putting the coffee pot on, and I noticed it said that it made 12 cups of espresso. I’d been drinking that, diluted with milk, before lunchtime. I stopped drinking the coffee, and it all got a bit easier after that. Do not drink 12 espressos before midday. It’s enormously bad for your mind.

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‘My Brain Was Changed Forever’

And, I found, I could not lie. I could not write fiction. So instead I wrote the truth. I started an anonymous blog on which I chronicled my stroke recovery as a writer. It connected me to friends that I have to this day.

I became an introvert. I learned to protect my energy, something that now serves me well in midlife. I learned to take better care of myself. I learned to devote my time to things that reinvigorated me, to things that were important. Write a paragraph in my journal. This person, not that. A bath and not makeup.

My brain was changed forever. The dead spot never rejuvenated. But the brain was making new paths around the destruction. In this way, blood traveled in a new way around my heart. Also in this way, there are new neural pathways in my brain.

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, in BuzzFeed, on having a stroke at age 33.

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Photo: reighleblanc, Flickr

Understanding Mick Fleetwood by the Story of His Car, ‘Lettuce Leaf’

There’s a way to understand Mick Fleetwood, and it’s through “Lettuce Leaf.” Fleetwood was a 20-something penniless musician playing blues with John Mayall when he saw a 1933 Austin Seven four-seater on a London street. He left the owner a note proclaiming, “I’m in love with your car, if it ever needs a good home, please call me.”

He bought the car two years later, just as Fleetwood Mac was forming, and he nicknamed it Lettuce Leaf for its green color. He drove Lettuce Leaf to his 1970 wedding to Jenny Boyd, the younger sister of Pattie Boyd, then married to George Harrison.

Time passed, and the money and cars started coming in. Fleetwood stashed Lettuce Leaf at his friend Eric Clapton’s British estate when he moved to L.A. in the 1970s and forgot about her for 14 years. His band sold millions of records; he got divorced, remarried, and got divorced again from Jenny. And then he got a call from Clapton’s manager, asking him if he remembered the Austin. Fleetwood found Lettuce Leaf in an apple orchard, with birds and squirrels making it their home. He had the car restored and shipped to Maui. Now he squires Mum to lunch in Lettuce Leaf every Sunday.

Fleetwood’s tendency is never to let go of anything, whether it’s Lettuce Leaf, his band, or the stubborn delusion there’s money to be made in celebrity restaurants. This has been a blessing with the band, less so in his personal and financial life. He bought a farm outside Sydney in 1980, and when his accountant flew out to tell him he couldn’t afford it anymore, Fleetwood simply departed for Singapore in the middle of the night, leaving his accountant behind and sending a note reading:

“Oh Brian, Brian, we’ve something to say./We stopped in Singapore the other day./To a hotel we went, the best in town./Amusements we sought, amusements we found.”

— In Men’s Journal, Stephen Rodrick profiles Mick Fleetwood, who at 67, is still having the time of his life.

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Photo: Joe Bielawa

Interview: Kiera Feldman on Oral Roberts, God and Journalism

In our latest Longreads Exclusive, Kiera Feldman and Tulsa-based magazine This Land Press went deep into the downfall of the Oral Roberts family dynasty—how Richard Roberts went from heir to the televangelist’s empire, to stripped from his role at Oral Roberts University.

Feldman, a Brooklyn-based journalist, and This Land Press have worked together before—her story “Grace in Broken Arrow” was named our top pick for Best of Longreads 2012, and it explored another scandal inside a religious institution, sex abuse at a Tulsa Christian school. I exchanged emails with Feldman to discuss the making of the Oral Roberts story, and her start in journalism.

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