The Longreads Blog

Instafiction's Jeremy Bushnell: My Top Fiction Longreads of 2011

Jeremy P. Bushnell is the editor-in-chief of Instafiction.org, which links to a quality short story each weekday.  He stockpiles many other links at his blog, Raccoon.  He’s also on Twitter

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Backbone,” David Foster Wallace (The New Yorker)

During his lifetime, David Foster Wallace made massive contributions to the worlds of fiction and nonfiction alike, and I still miss his presence in the world acutely. The Pale King was a towering book of my summer, and although it didn’t quite yield the pleasures that a truly finished work might have, many of its fragments and episodes had the power of great short stories.  See, for instance, this chapter, published as a standalone piece in The New Yorker.

Zone One,” Colson Whitehead (excerpt, Esquire)

Whitehead’s Zone One is a great 2011 novel about government, bureaucracy, urban space, and human population.  Oh yeah, it has zombies in it, too.  Esquire gave us the first 20 pages—detailing a four-zombie attack on the book’s protagonist—right before Halloween, but it’s just as good a read now, at year’s end.

Female Explosion Syndrome” Jessica Forcier (New Delta Review)

Women all over the globe begin spontaneously combusting.  Men don’t.  Feminist?  Fabulist?  All of the above?  Either way, this one stuck with us.  Thanks to New Delta Reviewfor publishing it.

The Empty Room,” Jonathan Lethem (Paris Review)

Lethem hasn’t put out a short story collection since 2006’s How We Got Insipid, but he’s still writing short fiction, and this year he placed a memorable tale of domestic collapse with the Paris Review.  The setup: Upon moving his family into a sprawling farmhouse, a father makes a decision: one room will remain empty. “The empty room is like a living organ in our family’s house,” he claims, although in actuality it becomes the hollow core around which the family implodes.   

Becoming Deer,” Rachel Levy (PANK Magazine)

This fall, in the Chicago Reader, our Associate Editor Jamie Yates praised this story (from PANK Magazine) as a story that straddles the line between “the realistic and the mythical” and derives strength from each. You could also say it does the same with the line between the human and the animal. All this line-crossing makes the story into a kind of tangled skein, humming with tension. Taut, terse, and eerie: the best of a certain kind of experimental work. 

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We also featured tons of good stuff this year that didn’t make its first appearance in 2011, so if you’re looking for more good fiction from the past, check out our Instafiction “Editor’s Picks” tag.

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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >

Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. 

From the beginning, their physical relationship was governed by the peculiar ways their respective brains processed sensory messages. Like many people with autism, each had uncomfortable sensitivities to types of touch or texture, and they came in different combinations.

Jack recoiled when Kirsten tried to give him a back massage, pushing deeply with her palms.

“Pet me,” he said, showing her, his fingers grazing her skin. But Kirsten, who had always hated the feeling of light touch, shrank from his caress.

“Only deep pressure,” she showed him, hugging herself.

He tried to kiss her, but it was hard for her to enjoy it, so obvious was his aversion. To him, kissing felt like what it was, he told her: mashing your face against someone else’s. Neither did he like the sweaty feeling of hand-holding, a sensation that seemed to dominate all others whenever they tried it.

“Navigating Love and Autism.” — Amy Harmon, The New York Times

See more #longreads about autism

Edith Zimmerman: My Top 6 Longreads of 2011

Edith Zimmerman is a writer and co-editor of The Hairpin.

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“All the Single Ladies,” Kate Bolick, The Atlantic

Kate’s story on the current state of marriage, and men, and women, is sad and happy and fascinating, and just generally makes me want to give her a high-five and roll cigarettes with her, even though neither of us smoke.

“Ask an Abortion Provider,” Dolores P., The Hairpin

Dolores P. wrote this for The Hairpin, the website I edit, and when she first sent it to me—out of the blue—I cried, and then I cried again when it was published, and the comments were so beautiful, but especially when someone left this comment: “I am pro-life, and was very moved by Dolores’s article. Although I really struggle with the ethics behind abortion, I recognize that in the end it’s all about people trying to figure out the best thing to do with their lives.” I had never seen that kind of response before. Actually there must have been at least five times I cried about things having to do with that piece. It made me proud to work where I work.

“The Medium Chill,” David Roberts, Grist

If you’ve ever achieved something you always wanted, and then the happiness lasted for … a couple days, and then you wanted something else, and something else, and there’s this lingering fear that nothing will ever be enough, read this article! This dude has it figured out, and if you just read the article enough times you can maybe bore through the computer and steal his life.

“My Superpower Is Being Alone Forever,” Joe Berkowitz and Joanna Neborsky, The Awl

The illustrations and story on this one are perfect. I love it. Joe is great. I think everyone falls in love with him a little bit here.

“Precarious Beauty,” Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker (sub. required)

I didn’t really know who Daphne Guinness was before this, but rarely have I been so fascinated by anything. I wanted to be everywhere they were, look at everything they saw, not-eat everything they didn’t eat. 

“Now That Books Mean Nothing,” Nell Boeschenstein, The Morning News

Nell writes about the books she didn’t feel like reading after her prophylactic double mastectomy, and her desire to “chug YouTube straight.” She’s funny, smart, thoughtful, and unusually self-aware. It makes me want to sit by her.

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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >

Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. 

Gangrey: Our Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Gangrey.com is a site dedicated to the practice of great newspaper and magazine storytelling. 

Some of these picks make it seem like we like each other. We do, most of the time. But we’re also intense critics. We get together in the woods in Georgia one weekend each year to tear one another apart. Physical combat is not rare. It’s in that spirit that you’ll find some cross pollination in the picks below. You’ll also see some good stuff that hasn’t shown up on the Top 5 lists so far. That’s on purpose. Hope you enjoy, and please know you’re welcome to come join us for last call over at gangrey.com. Drinks are on Wright.

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Wright Thompson

Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine, and he lives in Oxford, Mississippi.


“A Brevard Woman Disappeared, But Never Left Home,” Michael Kruse, St. Petersburg Times

“You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” John Jeremiah Sullivan, New York Times Magazine

“The View From Within,” Seth Wickersham, ESPN The Magazine

“Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America?” Tom Junod, Esquire

“The Real Lesson of the Tucson Tragedy,” David Von Drehle, Time

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Justin Heckert

Heckert is a writer living in Atlanta. 

“The Apostate” by Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker

 ”The Bomb That Didn’t Go Off,” Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

“Could Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?” Susan Dominus, New York Times Magazine

“A Brevard Woman Disappeared, but Never Left Home”, by Michael Kruse, St. Petersburg Times

“Staying the Course”, Wright Thompson, ESPN 

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Thomas Lake

Lake is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated living in Atlanta.


 “A Brevard Woman Disappeared, But Never Left Home,” Michael Kruse, St. Petersburg Times

“True Grits,” Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker (sub. required)

“Diving Headlong Into A Sunny Paradise,” Lane DeGregory, St. Petersburg Times

“Could This Be Happening? A Man’s Nightmare Made Real,” Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles Times

“When A Diver Goes Missing, A Deep Cave Is Scene Of A Deeper Mystery,” Ben Montgomery, St. Petersburg Times

“The Beards Are A Joke,” Justin Heckert, Atlanta Magazine, April 2011

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Mark Johnson

Johnson is a 2010 Pulitzer winner who covers health and science for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and once played guitar for a Rockford, Ill., grunge band called The Bloody Stumps.


“Watching the Murder of an Innocent Man,” Barry Bearak, New York Times Magazine

“Punched Out,” John Branch, New York Times

“The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist,” Rich Schapiro, Wired

“Imminent Danger,” Meg Kissinger, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Diving headlong into a sunny paradise,” Lane DeGregory, St. Petersburg Times

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Michael Kruse

Kruse, a staff writer at the St. Petersburg Times and contributing writer to ESPN’s Grantland, won this year’s ASNE award for distinguished non-deadline writing.


“The Lost Boys” Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly

The easiest-to-read hardest thing I read this year.

“The Lazarus File,” Matthew McGough, The Atlantic

Simple: suspense and surprise.

“You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” John Jeremiah Sullivan, The New York Times Magazine

My first reaction when I read this? Jealousy and awe. And when I read it a second time? And a third? Same.

“A man’s nightmare made real,” Chris Goffard, the Los Angeles Times

Riveting. The work of a master.

“God’s Away on Business,” Spencer Hall, Every Day Should Be Saturday

George Teague, college football and big thoughts.

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Ben Montgomery

Montgomery is an enterprise reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, and he lives in Tampa.


“If I Die Young,” Lane DeGregory, St. Petersburg Times

“The Guiltless Pleasure,” Rick Bragg, Gourmet

“A Lot To Lose,” Tony Rehagen, Indianapolis Monthly

“The Shepard’s Lamb,” Danielle Paquette, Indiana University Daily Student

“Voice of America,” by Coozledad, rurritable

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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >

Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. 

[Three-part travelogue on Muay Thai boxing camp.]

In January of 2010, Neil Chamberlain left Brooklyn for a three-month tour of Muay Thai boxing camps in Thailand. While abroad he kept an online chronicle of his experiences that was followed voraciously by his family and friends. Neil returned from Thailand in early April; less than two weeks later he was dead at age twenty-eight, killed by a hit-and-run driver. In light of the brute intensities he’d so recently and lovingly chronicled, the cruel and sudden randomness of his passing was impossible to comprehend. Like many others close to him I’ve re-read this often since his accident, missing my friend, lusting after his sentences, wishing desperately that I could read even one more.

“Fighting + Otherwise.” —Neil Chamberlain, The Classical

See more boxing #longreads

Mike Dang: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Mike Dang is editor of Bundle and managing editor for Longreads. See his longreads page here.

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I’ve read a lot of great longreads this year, but I know that a longread is truly special when I become its biggest cheerleader. I’ll casually slip the story into conversations, teasing out some of its best bits to wheedle the person into reading it later on his or her own. Here are five of those stories:

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“Windeye.” Brian Evenson, PEN America

Although this story wasn’t published in 2011, it was one of my favorites from the 2011 Pen/O. Henry Prize winners published in an anthology earlier this spring. The set up is terrific:

“Something wrong with the window,” he said. “Or not the window exactly but the number of windows.” She was smiling, waiting. “The problem is the number of windows. There’s one more window on the outside than on the inside.” He covered his mouth with his hand.

“Chat History.” Rebecca Armendariz, GOOD

Most of our casual conversations occur over e-mail threads or instant messenger, rather than the telephone. This happens so frequently that we rarely go back to read those threads and chats. In this heartbreaking longread, a woman remembers a relationship through a series of chats archived in her Gmail inbox. It compelled me to go through my own archives.

“Getting Bin Laden,” Nicholas Schmidle, The New Yorker

Already on many people’s Top 5 lists, this is one of the most exciting stories I’ve read. Schmidle was able to make you feel like you are with the 23 Navy SEALs who were on the ground in Abbottabad the night we got Bin Laden, even though he was only able to piece the story together by interviewing a number of people directly involved in the raid. I love how he focused on all the minute details — including a bit where the White House ordered sandwich platters from Costco before turning the Situation Room into a war room.

When Irish Eyes Are Crying.” Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair

I write about money for a living, so I read everything about the financial crisis. Michael Lewis is one of the best financial journalists of our time, and he has pointed out time and again how terrible countries and its people can be with money (the U.S. in “The Big Short,” Iceland in a V.F. longread published in April 2009, and Greece in a V.F. longread published in Oct. 2010). Lewis continues his “financial disaster tourism” with Ireland this year, and, once again, leaves us shaking our heads.

“Mister Lytle: An Essay.” John Jeremiah Sullivan, Paris Review

I know. JJS is clearly the Ryan Gosling of longreads this year. This essay was published last fall, but I didn’t get a chance to read it until I picked up Sullivan’s collections of essays, Pulphead. Sullivan recalls a time when he served as a houseboy for Andrew Lytle, a revered Southern author. The way Sullivan unfolds his story is just: magical. Other readers agree — the essay won a National Magazine Award in May.

Bonus:

“The Fresh Air Interview: Jay-Z ‘Decoded.’” Terry Gross, Fresh Air

The great thing about radio longreads — otherwise known as #audiofiles — is that producers get some poor intern to transcribe the entire broadcast so it doubles as a longread. I love the part where Terry and Jay-Z discuss the story behind “99 Problems” — really just the idea that Terry sat down to listen to Jay-Z’s records for this interview is perfect.

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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >

Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. 

Jared Keller: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Jared Keller: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

The Believer's Karolina Waclawiak: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Karolina Waclawiak is a novelist and screenwriter. She is also the deputy editor of The Believer. Her first novel, How To Get Into The Twin Palms, will be out July 2012 from Two Dollar Radio.

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I’ve always been fascinated with religion, Russia, and missing persons stories so these five nonfiction pieces really captured my attention this year. The fallout from The New Yorker‘s Scientology piece turned out to be as compelling as the essay itself—and I had to put The New Yorker on here twice because the recent piece on Vladimir Putin is spectacular and continually evolving. Paul Collins’ piece on missing Barbara Follett was utterly haunting and Paul is a master of uncovering long-hidden mysteries. Everyone should check out all of his work, and I’m sure many have after reading that piece. And really, for the other two, who can turn away from secret cults and dead bodies found on beaches? Not me.

1. “The Civil Archipelago,” David Remnick, The New Yorker

2. “The Apostate,” Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker

3. “The Body on Somerton Beach,” Mike Dash, Smithsonian

4. “Inside ‘The Order,’ One Mormon Cult’s Secret Empire,” Jesse Hyde, Rolling Stone

5. “Vanishing Act,” Paul Collins, Lapham’s Quarterly

BONUS

“Love in a Cold Climate,” Nancy Jo Sales, Vanity Fair

Say what you will of Ms. Love, but she’ll always have a fan in me. 

“To Have and Have Not,” Matt Tyrnauer, Vanity Fair

I found myself endlessly quoting this piece on screen legend Lauren Bacall.

“Judy Lewis, Secret Daughter of Hollywood, Dies at 76,” Paul Vitello, The New York Times

NY Times’ fascinating obituary of Loretta Young’s illegitimate daughter with Clark Gable, Judy Lewis.

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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >

Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. 

Lightning Rods is about a salesman named Joe who fails to sell a single Encyclopedia Britannica and sells exactly one Electrolux vacuum cleaner. He realizes the problem isn’t with him. The problem is with other people. He needs to sell “something people knew they needed anyway.” He sets up a business of contracted female administrative assistants—nicknamed Lightning Rods—that have anonymous sex with the male employees in an office through a glory hole in the bathroom. He says he can convince people that this is a substitute for ordinary sex, and a way of guarding against workplace sexual harassment. The idea sweeps the nation and changes everything. Ms. DeWitt gives the last word of her novel to George Washington: “In America anything is possible.”

“Novels From the Edge: For Helen DeWitt, the Publishing World Is a High-Stakes Game.” — Michael H. Miller, The New York Observer

See more #longreads about publishing