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Remembering the Life and Work of Journalist Matthew Power (1974-2014)

Matthew Power

Matt was the bravest writer I’ve ever known. He covered conflict, climbed mountains, and followed in the exploratory footsteps of so many unfortunate travelers of yore in order to write his own account of what such trips felt like today, to a modern consciousness. This last piece was his specialty. They were why we read him, why people sent him places. He did those pieces better than anyone. Matt was living testimony to a core belief of mine, a belief shaped by my many conversations on the subject with Matt: If you travel, you must trust. Openness is not gullibility. A willingness to be vulnerable does not endanger you.

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How an Autistic Child Found an Important Connection with Disney Films

In the latest New York Times Magazine, Ron Suskind explores how his autistic son Owen found a voice through the lessons and sidekicks in Disney films. The story is an excerpt from the journalist’s new book, Life, Animated:

Owen’s chosen affinity clearly opened a window to myth, fable and legend that Disney lifted and retooled, just as the Grimm Brothers did, from a vast repository of folklore. Countless cultures have told versions of “Beauty and the Beast,” which dates back 2,000 years to the Latin “Cupid and Psyche” and certainly beyond that. These are stories human beings have always told themselves to make their way in the world.

But what draws kids like Owen to these movies is something even more elemental. Walt Disney told his early animators that the characters and the scenes should be so vivid and clear that they could be understood with the sound turned off. Inadvertently, this creates a dream portal for those who struggle with auditory processing, especially, in recent decades, when the films can be rewound and replayed many times.

Disney provided raw material, publicly available and ubiquitous, that Owen, with our help, built into a language and a tool kit. I’m sure, with enough creativity and energy, this can be done with any number of interests and disciplines. For some kids, their affinity is for train schedules; for others, it’s maps. While our household may not be typical, with a pair of writerly parents and a fixation on stories — all of which may have accentuated and amplified Owen’s native inclinations — we have no doubt that he shares a basic neurological architecture with people on the autism spectrum everywhere.

Read the story.

Read more on autism

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Photo credit

All Aboard: Four Stories About Trains

Ah, the romance of the rails. I still bear vivid memories of my family’s post-Christmas train ride to New York City when I was an adolescent. I listened to my non-Apple mp3 player and watched, wide-eyed, the people and places passing by. Last year, I hopped commuter train after commuter train trying to bridge the unwieldy path of public transit from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Today, my social media feeds are overrun with my writerly friends pining for a free Amtrak ticket and a quiet place to work. All aboard, indeed.

1. “Small Towns in Southwest Fear Loss of Cherished Train Line.” (Dan Frosch, New York Times, Feb. 2014)

The Southwest Chief train line is a historic fixture in small-towns in New Mexico, and its absence might bring about their demise.

2. “Train in Vain.” (Evan Kindley, n+1, March 2014)

A reality check for the writers salivating over the possibility of Amtrak’s writer residency.

3. “Starchitect Trio: The Men Behind Germany’s Building Debacles.” (Der Spiegel, June 2013)

Billions of euros, year-long delays in construction — just what is going on in Stuttgart’s train station?

4. “How to Spend 47 Hours on a Train and Not Go Crazy.” (Nathaniel Rich, New York Times Magazine, Feb. 2013)

Why do people choose to travel cross-country via train? Meet the passengers of the Sunset Limited.

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Photo: Feliciano Guimarães

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

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The Feel Of Nothing: A Life In America’s Batting Cages

Steve Salerno Missouri Review | Winter 2004| 24 minutes (6,016 words)

Steve Salerno’s essays and memoirs have appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, Esquire and many other publications. His 2005 book, SHAM, was a groundbreaking deconstruction of the self-help movement, and he is working on a similar book about medicine. He teaches globalization and media at Lehigh University. This essay first appeared in the Missouri Review (subscribe here!). Thanks to Salerno for allowing us to reprint it here.

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Observed on video at half-speed, through the metal lattice-work of the batting cage, it is a perfectly choreographed pas de deux of man and machine. While the machine readies the pitch, the man executes the idiosyncratic but vital preparatory movements of torso and hand that jump-start his batting rhythm; he leans forward, then rocks his weight back, the bat wavering in a narrow arc above his head much as the young palms visible in the background yield to the soft ocean breezes—slightly forward of true vertical, slightly aft, slightly forward again. As the dimpled yellow ball shuffles down that last segment of the feeder sleeve toward the pair of spinning wheels that will propel it homeward, the batter’s hands twist around the axis of the lower wrist in a subtle cocking mechanism; when the ball drops between the wheels and disappears for an instant, the batter’s front foot lifts, then returns to earth perhaps six inches beyond its initial resting place; the bat itself remains well back, high over the rear shoulder, in obeisance to an ancient admonition—“hips before hands.”

Even in slo-mo, the swiftness of the ball’s flight to the plate startles. At first it seems that there’s no way the man can snap the bat down and around his body fast enough to intercept the sphere (which actually, now, more resembles a yellow antiaircraft tracer) before it blurs by him…. But no, he starts his swing, his lower body leading the way, pivoting sharply on the front foot—now—and in fact, somehow manages to confront the pitch out
 ahead of the ersatz plate. If you pause the video at this precise point—that millisecond before impact—you marvel at the fact that, slicing through the strike zone, the bat, despite being molded from a single sheet of metal, is no longer a straight, rigid line. Rather, the bat- head clearly lags behind the handle in its travel to the ball, a vivid manifestation of the explosive torque all good hitters rely on for generating power. An instant later, post-contact, the ball too is misshapen, flattened on the impact side, shooting off the bat in a shallow upward arc with such velocity that it appears to leave a comet-like contrail in its wake.

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Showtime, Synergy

Longreads Pick

Our latest Longreads Member Pick is now free for everyone: Matt Siegel’s love story about identity, sex and finding companionship:

It was an acquaintance and former editor of one of those gay lifestyle magazines who advised twenty-year-old me to tone it down if I ever wanted to find a boyfriend. This coming from a man obsessed with anything Disney-related; the walls of his West Hollywood condo adorned with carefully framed Snow White and Fantasia animation cels. “You don’t need to tell them how much you love Belinda Carlisle on your first date,” he said. “But I do love Belinda Carlisle! That quavering vibrato!” I whined. “Well,” he said, “they’ll find out eventually, and by that point they will love you, Belinda and all.” While I hate(d) him for saying it, I understood the algorithm: gay men are attracted to men, so the more you resemble a man, the more desirable you will be to a gay man. [Insert frowny face emoticon.]

Source: The Awl
Published: Mar 4, 2014
Length: 29 minutes (7,343 words)

Showtime, Synergy: Exclusive Early Access to a New Story from The Awl and Matt Siegel

Longreads Pick

This week, we are excited to give Longreads Members exclusive early access to a new story from Matt Siegel, to be published next week on The Awl. Here’s more from The Awl co-founder and editor Choire Sicha:

“Matt Siegel’s very funny nonfiction story of love, deceit and betrayal (oh my God, I know!!!) comes on all unassuming and conversational. Unlike many citizens of the MFA world (Matt’s a recent graduate of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program), he keeps his techniques hidden. We’re really looking forward to publishing this at The Awl, but we’re more thrilled to share it with Longreads Members—like ourselves!—first.”

Siegel (@unabashedqueer) has previously written for The Huffington Post, The Hairpin, Flaunt Magazine, and The Advocate.

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Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 2, 2014
Length: 29 minutes (7,343 words)

Tell Me A Story: A Reading List

These four fantastic fiction pieces will take you far away from this perpetual winter.

1. “Lost in Transit.” (Leon, The Swan Children Magazine, March 2014)

This story is a beautiful, haunting example of the work produced by the Swan Children, a collective of artists expressing their experiences under “homeschooled, Quiverfull, and conservative Christian upbringing.” The first issue debuted March 1. It is not to be missed.

2. “Touchdown!” (Jerad W. Alexander, Pithead Chapel)

An afternoon of watching football is disrupted by the implications of a kitchen injury.

3. “Conversion.” (Sara Novic, Guernica, February 2014)

Carter isn’t sure what to make of his mother’s fascination with the local evangelical congregation — until it’s too late.

4. “The Unraveling.” (A.N. Devers, Electric Literature, 2013)

A mysterious real estate agent promises a young Brooklyn couple that his unorthodox methods will find the perfect apartment — if they cooperate, that is.

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Photo: Sergey Yakunin

We need your help to get to 5,000 Longreads Members.

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

Showtime, Synergy: Exclusive Early Access to a New Story from The Awl and Matt Siegel

This week, we are excited to give Longreads Members exclusive early access to a new story from Matt Siegel, to be published next week on The Awl. Here’s more from The Awl co-founder and editor Choire Sicha:

“Matt Siegel’s very funny nonfiction story of love, deceit and betrayal (oh my God, I know!!!) comes on all unassuming and conversational. Unlike many citizens of the MFA world (Matt’s a recent graduate of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program), he keeps his techniques hidden. We’re really looking forward to publishing this at The Awl, but we’re more thrilled to share it with Longreads Members—like ourselves!—first.”

Siegel (@thatmattsiegel) has previously written for The Huffington Post, The Hairpin, Flaunt Magazine, and The Advocate.

Become a Longreads Member to get the story

Longreads Members, login here to start reading

Oscar Night in Hollywood, 1948

Longreads Pick

The great Raymond Chandler writing about the Academy Awards, and the motion picture industry as whole, for The Atlantic Magazine in March 1948:

Show business has always been a little overnoisy, overdressed, overbrash. Actors are threatened people. Before films came along to make them rich they often had need of a desperate gaiety. Some of these qualities prolonged beyond a strict necessity have passed into the Hollywood mores and produced that very exhausting thing, the Hollywood manner,which is a chronic case of spurious excitement over absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, and for once in a lifetime, I have to admit that Academy Awards night is a good show and quite funny in spots, although I’ll admire you if you can laugh at all of it.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Mar 1, 1948
Length: 15 minutes (3,820 words)