“It isn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just ‘It’.” —Rudyard Kipling 1. “Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Clara Bow, ‘It’ Girl,” (Anne Helen Petersen, The Hairpin, May 2011) Clara Bow was the original It girl, so much so that her 1927 film, titled—what else?—“It,” more or less defined the phenomenon. This piece, from Petersen’s […]
Nonfiction
The Making of Citizen Kane
“I must admit that it was intended consciously as a social document. … [but] the storyteller’s first duty is to the story.” -From the 1991 documentary “The Complete Citizen Kane,” on the Orson Welles masterpiece. The film features interviews with Welles from 1960 and 1982, as well as an interview with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, […]
How a Convicted Murderer Prepares for a Job Interview
“In prison Angel thought that it wouldn’t be too hard to find a job once he got out. He believed he had come a long way.”
How a Convicted Murderer Prepares for a Job Interview
“In prison Angel thought that it wouldn’t be too hard to find a job once he got out. He believed he had come a long way.”
5 Great Stories on the Lives of Poets
“If I knew where poems came from, I’d go there.”
The Wisdom of Mr. Rogers
Fred McFeely Rogers taught us about ourselves and fought for PBS.
The Wisdom of Mr. Rogers
Fred McFeely Rogers taught us about ourselves and fought for PBS.
‘My Body Stopped Speaking to Me’: The First-Person Account of a Near-Death Experience
Our recent Longreads Member Pick by National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello from GQ is now free for everyone. Special thanks to our Longreads Members for helping bring these stories to you—if you’re not a member, join us here. “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” is a personal story about Corsello’s near-death experience, first published […]
18 Deep Interviews with Great Writers
Kevin Smokler shares some of his favorite interviews.
18 Deep Interviews with Great Writers
Kevin Smokler shares some of his favorite interviews.
