Longreads Pick
A New Yorker with limited French skills gets dropped into an advertising agency in Paris:
“In French class, I did well in spoken tests, but my written French was appalling. The conditional tense confused me, and the French loved the conditional tense, French conversation practically being founded on relativity—perhaps, maybe, I don’t know. In kissing, some people were ripe, others were not. Whole groups could be off-limits.
“It definitely wasn’t appropriate to kiss your boss, except when it was, though it was correct to kiss your underlings, except when it wasn’t. Young men generally didn’t kiss other young men, unless they were friends outside work. But older men did, sometimes. You never knew. Also, these kisses were intended not to touch the cheek but to glance it. People kept their eyes locked on the middle distance and seemed, while kissing or being kissed, very bored.”
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Published: Apr 19, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,069 words)
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Longreads Pick
A review of Bissell’s new book of essays—and how the writer both entertains and frustrates:
“The best thing about Tom Bissell: He is fun. I think of him as ‘a wild and crazy guy.’ I’m by turns entertained and completely aghast at his antics. He is totally obsessive. He’s watched that appalling movie The Room a bajillion times. I loved the idea of him and David Foster Wallace negotiating gravely about whether or not they ought to dip tobacco together (they did). Bissell, apparently, travels all over the place with a hardcover copy of Infinite Jest, which is surely the most inconvenient thing outside of, like, a chihuahua, to have to pack in a suitcase. And I don’t know if he’s given it up by now (I hope so) but he used to drink 10 Diet Cokes every day. Ten! That is terrible, Tom Bissell! I worry about him.”
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Published: Apr 19, 2012
Length: 13 minutes (3,487 words)
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A review of Tom Bissell’s new book of essays, Magic Hours:
The best thing about Tom Bissell: He is fun. I think of him as “a wild and crazy guy.” I’m by turns entertained and completely aghast at his antics. He is totally obsessive. He’s watched that appalling movie The Room a bajillion times. I loved the idea of him and David Foster Wallace negotiating gravely about whether or not they ought to dip tobacco together (they did). Bissell, apparently, travels all over the place with a hardcover copy of Infinite Jest, which is surely the most inconvenient thing outside of, like, a chihuahua, to have to pack in a suitcase. And I don’t know if he’s given it up by now (I hope so) but he used to drink 10 Diet Cokes every day. Ten! That is terrible, Tom Bissell! I worry about him.
“Abnegation.” — Maria Bustillos, Los Angeles Review of Books
See more #review #longreads
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Retracing the steps of a Marine who went missing in the Montana wilderness. Family, friends and fellow Iraq veterans struggle to understand what happened to 30-year-old Noah Pippin:
Pierce remembers the stranger as none too friendly. Pippin kept his back turned when Pierce started asking questions and said curtly that he’d hiked in from Hungry Horse. Seeing the fatigues, Pierce asked if he was military, and Noah told him he was a vet.
‘You been over in Iraq?’
‘Got back a little while ago.’
‘I was in Vietnam,’ said Pierce, hoping to break the ice. ‘Navy.’
Noah didn’t answer.
‘If you’re going hiking in these parts, you need a gun,’ said Pierce. ‘Do you have one?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Just a .38.’
‘That ain’t much to stuff in the face of a grizzly when he’s chewing on your foot.’
‘It’s all I got.’
“Why Noah Went to the Woods.” — Mark Sundeen, Outside
See also: “The Waiting.” — Ashley Halsey III, Lonnae O’Neal Parker, Washington Post, Nov. 23, 2010
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James Erwin, a writer for software manuals in Des Moines, Iowa, responded to a Reddit thread wondering what would happen if the U.S. Marines battled the Roman Empire. His comments lit up the Internet:
The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes.
The section of Bagram where the 35th was gathered suddenly reappears in a field outside Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber River. Without substantially prepared ground under it, the concrete begins sinking into the marshy ground and cracking. Colonel Miles Nelson orders his men to regroup near the vehicle depot—nearly all of the MEU’s vehicles are still stripped for air transport. He orders all helicopters airborne, believing the MEU is trapped in an earthquake.
“How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big Budget Flick.” — Jason Fagone, Wired
See also: “Flick Chicks.” Mindy Kaling, New Yorker, Oct. 3, 2011
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Longreads Pick
James Erwin, a writer for software manuals in Des Moines, Iowa, responded to a Reddit thread wondering what would happen if the U.S. Marines battled the Roman Empire. His comments lit up the Internet:
“The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes.
“The section of Bagram where the 35th was gathered suddenly reappears in a field outside Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber River. Without substantially prepared ground under it, the concrete begins sinking into the marshy ground and cracking. Colonel Miles Nelson orders his men to regroup near the vehicle depot—nearly all of the MEU’s vehicles are still stripped for air transport. He orders all helicopters airborne, believing the MEU is trapped in an earthquake.”
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Published: Mar 20, 2012
Length: 19 minutes (4,949 words)
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Filmmaker Kunle Afolayan is looking to push the boundaries of moviemaking in Nigeria—but it’s still too early to know whether the audiences can support a film with even a $500,000 budget:
Twenty years after bursting from the grungy street markets of Lagos, the $500 million Nigerian movie business churns out more than a thousand titles a year on average, and trails only Hollywood and Bollywood in terms of revenues. The films are hastily shot and then burned onto video CDs, a cheap alternative to DVDs. They are seldom seen in the developed world, but all over Africa consumers snap up the latest releases from video peddlers for a dollar or two. And so while Afolayan’s name is unknown outside Africa, at home, the actor-director is one of the most famous faces in the exploding entertainment scene known — inevitably — as “Nollywood.”
On a continent where economies usually depend on extracting natural resources or on charity, moviemaking is now one of Nigeria’s largest sources of private-sector employment.
“A Scorsese in Lagos: The Making of Nigeria’s Film Industry.” — Andrew Rice, New York Times Magazine
More film #longreads: “I Watched Every Steven Soderbergh Movie.” — Dan Kois, Slate, Sept. 14, 2011
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Longreads Pick
Filmmaker Kunle Afolayan is looking to push the boundaries of moviemaking in Nigeria—but it’s still too early to know whether the audiences can support a film with even a $500,000 budget:
“Twenty years after bursting from the grungy street markets of Lagos, the $500 million Nigerian movie business churns out more than a thousand titles a year on average, and trails only Hollywood and Bollywood in terms of revenues. The films are hastily shot and then burned onto video CDs, a cheap alternative to DVDs. They are seldom seen in the developed world, but all over Africa consumers snap up the latest releases from video peddlers for a dollar or two. And so while Afolayan’s name is unknown outside Africa, at home, the actor-director is one of the most famous faces in the exploding entertainment scene known — inevitably — as ‘Nollywood.’
“On a continent where economies usually depend on extracting natural resources or on charity, moviemaking is now one of Nigeria’s largest sources of private-sector employment.”
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Published: Feb 24, 2012
Length: 18 minutes (4,712 words)
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