Search Results for: Outside

West of the Known

Longreads Pick

[Fiction, not single-page] Loyalty, betrayal and a final judgment for a brother-sister duo in the Old West:

“My brother was the first man to come for me. The first man I saw in the raw, profuse with liquor, outside a brothel in New Mexico Territory. He was the first I know to make a promise then follow on through. There is nothing to forgive. For in the high violence of joy, is there not often a desire to swear devotion? But what then? When is it ever brung off to the letter? When they come for our blood, we will not end, but go on in an unworldly fever.

“I come here to collect, my brother said from the porch. If there was more I did not hear it for Uncle Bill and Aunt Josie stepped out and closed the door. I was in the kitchen canning tomatoes, standing over a row of mason jars, hands dripping a wat’ry red when in stepped a man inside a long buckskin coat.

“I’m your brother, Jackson, the man smiled, holding out his hand.”

Published: Oct 1, 2012
Length: 20 minutes (5,136 words)

The Long Shot

Longreads Pick

Following news of the discovery of a new planet in Alpha Centauri, a look at how scientists discover new planets:

“I’d come to meet Debra Fischer, a professor at San Francisco State University. As a co-discoverer of more than 150 planets, nearly half the known total outside our solar system, she is a prominent figure in astronomy. Her work on this lonely mountaintop could propel her past that, though, into realms of myth and legend. Fischer is using a modest, neglected telescope at CTIO to search for Earth-like planets in Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our own. If they exist, she should find them in three to five years.

“The implications would be timeless, echoing ancient questions of life’s purpose, outlining futures distant yet possible. Against the certainty of another Earth circling one of the closest stars in the sky, the entirety of recorded history would abruptly seem the briefest prelude to an eternal denouement, a fire kindled to be passed on without end. Alpha Centauri could become a beacon illuminating and bringing significance to the accumulated toils of generations. Driven by the spectral hope of another living world unexplored, our own could profoundly change. Or Fischer’s project could simply fail. Many astronomers assume it will.”

Source: Seed
Published: May 19, 2009
Length: 22 minutes (5,602 words)

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Texas MonthlyVanity Fair,Outside MagazineNarrativelyThe New York Review of Books, fiction from The New Yorker, plus a guest pick from Catherine Kustanczy.

“The Beautiful Game.” — Patrick Symmes, Outside

More by Symmes

The Beautiful Game

Longreads Pick

On Argentina’s violent—and often corrupt—soccer fan clubs:

“The first murder spawned by Argentinean soccer can be traced to 1924, when a Boca fan shot a Uruguayan rival during a tango-style showdown outside a luxury hotel in Montevideo. Sometime in the 1950s, the fan clubs organized for self-defense. La Doce took its fierce, fistfighting form in the 1970s. Then, around 1981, in the last violent days of Argentina’s military dictatorship, the fan killings accelerated. Journalist Amílcar Romero, who wrote a history of soccer—this country also produces philosophers and artists specializing in the sport—divided the violence into three ­periods. Only 12 fans had been killed during the roughly 30 years following that first hotel murder. In the next three decades there were 102. The next 30 years saw 144 dead.

“But Romero counted only game-day deaths. The antiviolence group Salvemos al Fútbol tallies 269 soccer-related deaths in its running count—with much of the killing moving off-site in recent years. In 2009, for example, the former Lepers leader Roberto ‘Pimpi’ Camino was shot four times while leaving a wine bar late at night. Today the violence often takes place within the fan clubs themselves, in fights to control the barras’ growing incomes and the benefits of their power. ‘They fight over money and women,’ one sportswriter told me. (He insisted on anonymity, saying, ‘No Argentine journalist could write this story,’ for fear of retaliation.)”

Source: Outside
Published: Oct 9, 2012
Length: 24 minutes (6,096 words)

[Fiction] A father uses his lottery winnings for an extravagant birthday party for his teenage daughter:

September 3rd: Having just turned forty, have resolved to embark on grand project of writing every day in this new black book just got at OfficeMax. Exciting to think how in one year, at rate of one page/day, will have written three hundred and sixty-five pages, and what a picture of life and times then available for kids & grandkids, even greatgrandkids, whoever, all are welcome (!) to see how life really was/is now. Because what do we know of other times really? How clothes smelled and carriages sounded? Will future people know, for example, about sound of airplanes going over at night, since airplanes by that time passé? Will future people know sometimes cats fought in night? Because by that time some chemical invented to make cats not fight? Last night dreamed of two demons having sex and found it was only two cats fighting outside window. Will future people be aware of concept of ‘demons’? Will they find our belief in ‘demons’ quaint? Will ‘windows’ even exist? Interesting to future generations that even sophisticated college grad like me sometimes woke in cold sweat, thinking of demons, believing one possibly under bed? Anyway, what the heck, am not planning on writing encyclopedia, if any future person is reading this, if you want to know what a ‘demon’ was, go look it up, in something called an encyclopedia, if you even still have those!

Am getting off track, due to tired, due to those fighting cats.

“The Semplica-Girl Diaries.” — George Saunders, The New Yorker

More by George Saunders

The Semplica-Girl Diaries

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A father uses his lottery winnings for an extravagant birthday party for his teenage daughter:

“September 3rd: Having just turned forty, have resolved to embark on grand project of writing every day in this new black book just got at OfficeMax. Exciting to think how in one year, at rate of one page/day, will have written three hundred and sixty-five pages, and what a picture of life and times then available for kids & grandkids, even greatgrandkids, whoever, all are welcome (!) to see how life really was/is now. Because what do we know of other times really? How clothes smelled and carriages sounded? Will future people know, for example, about sound of airplanes going over at night, since airplanes by that time passé? Will future people know sometimes cats fought in night? Because by that time some chemical invented to make cats not fight? Last night dreamed of two demons having sex and found it was only two cats fighting outside window. Will future people be aware of concept of ‘demons’? Will they find our belief in ‘demons’ quaint? Will ‘windows’ even exist? Interesting to future generations that even sophisticated college grad like me sometimes woke in cold sweat, thinking of demons, believing one possibly under bed? Anyway, what the heck, am not planning on writing encyclopedia, if any future person is reading this, if you want to know what a ‘demon’ was, go look it up, in something called an encyclopedia, if you even still have those!

“Am getting off track, due to tired, due to those fighting cats.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 8, 2012
Length: 35 minutes (8,979 words)

An oral history of the Beltway sniper attacks that occurred during three weeks in October 2002. Ten people were killed, three people were injured, and many people were too afraid to leave their homes:

Iran Brown, victim, now 23: ‘I remember every detail, down to what I ate for breakfast: chocolate-chip waffles. My aunt drove me to school, and it was very early because she had to go to work. I was the first to arrive.

‘I got hit right under my left chest. I fell to the ground. A teacher came out to help me. I had my hand over the wound, but it wasn’t like in the movies with blood gushing out. I explained that I’d been shot and needed help, but it didn’t seem to register in her brain.

‘My aunt heard the shot and reversed the car when she saw me on the ground. I got up on my own and walked to the car. Of course, I’m panicking and praying. Reality is kicking in. My aunt was a nurse, so she knew more than the average person. She rushed me to a clinic.

‘I had been watching the news. I was aware of what was happening. I had asked our PE teacher why we were going outside if the sniper was in the area.

“Terror in October: A Look Back at the DC Sniper Attacks.” — Alicia C. Shepard, Washingtonian

More from the Washingtonian

Terror in October: A Look Back at the DC Sniper Attacks

Longreads Pick

An oral history of the Beltway sniper attacks that occurred during three weeks in October 2002. Ten people were killed, three people were injured, and many people were too afraid to leave their homes:

Iran Brown, victim, now 23: ‘I remember every detail, down to what I ate for breakfast: chocolate-chip waffles. My aunt drove me to school, and it was very early because she had to go to work. I was the first to arrive.

“‘I got hit right under my left chest. I fell to the ground. A teacher came out to help me. I had my hand over the wound, but it wasn’t like in the movies with blood gushing out. I explained that I’d been shot and needed help, but it didn’t seem to register in her brain.

“‘My aunt heard the shot and reversed the car when she saw me on the ground. I got up on my own and walked to the car. Of course, I’m panicking and praying. Reality is kicking in. My aunt was a nurse, so she knew more than the average person. She rushed me to a clinic.

“‘I had been watching the news. I was aware of what was happening. I had asked our PE teacher why we were going outside if the sniper was in the area.’

Source: Washingtonian
Published: Oct 1, 2012
Length: 31 minutes (7,862 words)

Adapted from Witchel’s forthcoming memoir All Gone. A daughter adjusts after her mother develops stroke-related dementia:

Mom faced me. ‘I want you to kill me,’ she said solemnly. For decades, she insisted that if she was mentally compromised in any way, her children were to pull the plug. But the situations we’d imagined never included her being compromised outside of a hospital, lasting years on end.

‘I can’t kill you,’ I answered steadily. ‘I have a husband and two stepsons and a mortgage. Someone will find out, and then I’ll have to go to prison.’

She sighed, exasperated.

‘I know this issue has always been important to you,’ I said. ‘So if you feel strongly about it, I understand that. You can end your own life. There are plenty of places that can help you do that.’

She was monumentally offended. ‘Committing suicide is against the Jewish religion!’ she declared.

I was dumbfounded. ‘So is committing murder! Did you ever think of that?’

Apparently not.

“How My Mother Disappeared.” — Alex Witchel, New York Times Magazine

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