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Writer Lev Grossman: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Lev Grossman writes about books and technology for Time magazine. He’s also the author of the bestselling novels The Magicians and The Magician King

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• “One Man’s Quest to Outrace Wind,” by Adam Fisher, Wired

Why do I never find stories like this? Probably because I’m not working as hard as Adam Fisher. Apparently there’s this whole subculture of dirt sailing: people who race wind-powered vehicles on land. Apparently this one guy announced that he’d figured out a way to build a dirt boat that, while sailing directly downwind, can go faster than the wind that’s propelling it. Impossible, right? This whole insular community of dirt sailers got up in arms about it. But no. It was not impossible. You just have to be really, really clever to figure it out.

• “Adventures in Depression,” by Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half

Writing about depression is hard, for the simple reason that when you’re depressed you can’t write, because you feel worthless, and who would want to read something written by a worthless person? I don’t know who Allie Brosh is, but this hybrid essay — half words, half pictures — gets as close as anything I’ve ever read to describing it. 

“Ads of Dragon,” by James Maliszewski, Grognardia

I’m cheating a bit here, because this is a series of posts rather than one single longread, but it’s important that people know about Grognardia, because it is the shit. Maliszewski writes brilliant and incisive essays about old-school role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Most people who go down that rabbit hole lose the ability to write about gaming with any real perspective, because when you’re obsessed with something, you lose all perspective about it. (I speak as one has been down that hole.) Somehow Maliszewski hung onto his, and it shows in this glorious series, in which he analyzes a series of ads that appeared in the gaming magazine Dragon back in the 1980s. 

• “Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck?” by Errol Morris, The New York Times

There isn’t anybody else quite like Errol Morris. I thought of him as a filmmaker before I started reading these essays that he posted on a New York Times blog. They’re not flashy writing, but his patient, unhurried, relentless pursuit of truth is a model for anybody who’s trying to tease apart a historical mystery crawling with ambiguity and unreliability. Here the mystery concerns Morris’s brother Noel, who went to MIT and was part of the very early computing scene in Cambridge the late 1960s, when the protocols of the proto-Internet were being hashed out. Morris’s brother died young, and Morris interviews his colleagues and goes through his notes to try to figure out whether he and his collaborator were the first people to use e-mail. I won’t spoil it for you.    

“Peyton’s Place,” by John Jeremiah Sullivan, GQ

Sullivan is my favorite magazine writer right now, bar none. Here he talks about the fact that his house was regularly used as a location for the filming of the soapy teen show One Tree Hill, and what that felt like. Which is something I would find inherently interesting anyway. The fact that Sullivan is the guy telling it and feeling makes it something more: An Important Fable for Our Time. Whatever Sullivan writes about automatically becomes a portal into the black soul of our stupid culture, and he gazes into it and somehow manages to remain calm and funny and smart while he reports back about what he sees. 

Writer Maria Bustillos: My Top Longreads of 2011

Maria Bustillos is a journalist who writes frequently for The Awl.

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The power of Allison Benedikt’s “Life After Zionist Summer Camp” (The Awl) derives from the purity of its point of view, which is that of one person’s lived experience, minutely and honestly detailed. Benedikt swings gracefully between humor and searing candor in this account of her growing ambivalence toward the religious, political and cultural institutions she’d grown up taking for granted. It’s a high-wire act of great elegance and sensitivity that will stay with me for a long time to come.

In “The Fire This Time” (Los Angeles Review of Books) Reza Aslan likewise makes a compelling case in opposition to conventional wisdom. I thought it by far the best of the 9/11 pieces that came out on the 10th anniversary of the catastrophe.

“American Marvel” (GQ), Edith Zimmerman’s profile of Chris Evans, the star of Captain America, upends everything one is accustomed to think about “movie stars” and celebrity, plus she blasts many assumptions about popular writing—and about reporters describing the world we inhabit—to absolute smithereens. Flesh-and-blood people suddenly appear on the screen where one had been expecting a cartoon. Steven Mikulan’s “Dr. Drew Feels Your Pain” (Los Angeles Magazine), by contrast, conjures a nuanced portrait out of the media fun-house mirror the old-fashioned way, via the painstaking layering up of detail through long and patient, keen observation. It has a similar payoff to the Zimmerman piece, in that you’re seeing a real world spring by magic out of the Potemkin one.

Spencer Soper’s Morning Call exposé of the sweatshop conditions at Amazon’s Allentown, Pa., warehouse came just as the Occupy movement was beginning to take hold. The disparity between the friendly face that Amazon crafts for public view and the abject brutality with which they treated their employees in Allentown demonstrated perfectly and at just the right time the terrible cost of profit-obsessed corporatism (and bargain-obsessed consumerism).

At Inside Higher Education, Steve Kolowich interviews Kathleen Fitzpatrick, a professor of media studies at Pomona College, regarding the coming digital revolution in academic research and publishing. Sounds a little dry, maybe, but check it out. Fitzpatrick and her forward-thinking colleagues have identified, and are carefully nurturing, the phoenix egg from which a new and improved academy is already beginning to hatch.

Bonus:

Fiction: George Saunders, Tenth of December (The New Yorker): best fiction of any length I read all year.

Humor: David Roth, Brief Interviews with Hideous Football Players (The Awl), a comic tour de force that fans of David Foster Wallace will particularly enjoy.

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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. 

Writer Steve Silberman: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Steve Silberman is a contributing editor for Wired magazine, one of Time‘s selected science tweeters, and the author of the NeuroTribes blog at the Public Library of Science. He is currently working on a book about autism and neurodiversity for Avery/Penguin. (Read recent Longreads by Silberman here.)

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After years of predictions from pundits that the migration of media to the Web and mobile devices would mean shorter and shallower stories aimed at a juvenilized readership incapable of sustained attention, I’m delighted to report that we’re in a renaissance of long-form writing. This has been made possible, in part, by insightful curators like Maria Popova (@brainpicker) and Mark Armstrong (@longreads), who point their readers to the best of the best, daily, on Twitter. Now what’s required are ways for freelancers and bloggers to earn the money they need to support this level of in-depth reporting and discursive exploration. Here are five pieces from 2011 that really stuck with me.

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• Sy Montgomery, “Deep Intellect: Inside the Mind of an Octopus” (Orion Magazine

• Carl Zimmer, “The Human Lake” (his blog, The Loom)

• Julia Bascom, “Quiet Hands,” (her blog, Just Stimming)

• Alexis Madrigal, “A Guide to the Occupy Wall Street API, Or Why the Nerdiest Way to Think About OWS Is So Useful” (The Atlantic)

Michael Hall, “Falling Comet: The Last Days of Bill Haley” (Texas Monthly)

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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. 

Matthias Rascher: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a high school in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter. He is also a longtime contributor to the #Longreads community and an author for Open Culture.

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“The Possibilian: David Eagleman and Mysteries of the Brain,” by Burkhard Bilger (The New Yorker)

This fascinating article describes how neuroscientist David Eagleman combines different sciences such as physics, psychology and linguistics with the study of the human brain to arrive at a better understanding of time perception. His latest collaboration with Brian Eno confirmed his theory that “time is a rubbery thing.”

“My Summer at an Indian Call Center,” by Andrew Marantz (Mother Jones)

The title is pretty self-explanatory. Andrew Marantz gives a vivid account of how an Indian “culture trainer” taught him how to act Australian so that he could work in a call center in Delhi. “Lessons learned: Americans are hotheads, Australians are drunks—and never say where you’re calling from.”

“The Vision Thing—How Marty Scorsese risked it all and lived to risk again in Hollywood,” by Rick Tetzeli (Fast Company)

A wonderful tribute to Scorsese’s monumental achievements in the film industry. Also: Marty talks about why he ventured into the 3-D world with his new movie Hugo

“Banishing consciousness: the mystery of anesthesia,” by Linda Geddes (New Scientist)

This is one of my favorites from this year. Linda takes us on a fascinating journey through medicine and neuroscience to find out what we currently know about how anaesthesia actually works.

“Face to face with Radovan Karadzic,” by Ed Vulliamy (The Guardian)

My last pick is also the most recent one, from December, and it is not an easy read. Along with an ITN film crew, Observer reporter Ed Vulliamy uncovered the terrifying truth of Serbian-run concentration camps in the Bosnian war. While former Serb leader Radovan Karadzic stands trial at The Hague, Vulliamy is called as a witness—and finds himself cross-examined in a private, close encounter with the man accused of masterminding genocide.

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. 

Writer Emily Gould: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Emily Gould is the author of And The Heart Says Whatever and the co-owner of Emily Books, and also she can’t stop blogging for some reason.

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1. “Letter from Astana,” by Keith Gessen (New Yorker, sub. required)

The New Yorker‘s “Letter From” essays, though they’re always entertaining and executed with finesse, can leave the reader with an impression that’s basically: “Kazakhstan (or wherever), how wacky.” Keith showed exactly how and why Kazakhstan’s history and political situation have created a unique way of life, and also those crazy skyscrapers in the middle of the steppe that make Williamsburg’s waterfront look tasteful. And he ate horse ham.  

2. “Dangerous Worlds: Teaching Film In Prison,” by Ann Snitow (Dissent Magazine)

Feminist critic and longtime New School professor Ann Snitow “leapt to join” a program that brings New School teachers to a correctional facility upstate out of “boredom”—she craved a challenge less played-out than trying to get college students to care about feminism, which she says is “everywhere and nowhere” in their lives. The result is one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever read. Snitow confronts her own preconceived notions and white liberal guilt head-on, but also gives herself credit for being a good teacher. She evokes her students’ complexity by describing their surprising, varied responses to the movies she assigns. At one point she gives them a speech: “I know in all your classes and workshops you’re being taught to take responsibility for what you’ve done, and I’m not saying no to that. But responsibility is different from shame. Best to see the endless tale of one’s badness as an inadequate story, meant to make you feel like a worm. OK, take responsibility, but also move on. Everyone is dependent; total independence is a myth. Inside or out, dependency is the human condition.” “This hectoring lecture hasn’t convinced anyone,” she writes, but I think she underestimates herself. 

3. “The Smelliest Block In New York,” by Molly Young (New York Magazine, not single-page)

I’m obsessed with smells and with New York, which contains maybe the world’s best and worst smells, often in the same two-block radius.  Molly Young’s descriptions of smells are a joy.  Her descriptions in general are a joy. She’s just getting better and better and I can’t wait to see what she does next. (My fantasy would be a regular column about smells, but that’s probably unrealistic.)

4. “Willis and Happiness,” by Rich Beck (n+1)

Here, Rich Beck breaks down and rearticulates one of groundbreaking radical feminist and pop culture critic Ellen Willis’s most powerful—and most confusing—arguments.  This is a must, must, must, must read for anyone interested in the past, present and future of the fight for equality.  

5. “The Aquarium,” by Aleksandar Hemon (The New Yorker, sub. required)

This and #2, I would recommend if it’s been a while since you last wept uncontrollably. There’s really not a lot else to say about this. It’s an unsentimental examination of a cosmically unfair event, the the kind of thing no one wants to acknowledge is possible, but which happens regularly. I have no idea how the author could stand to write it, unless he also couldn’t stand not to write it. The parts about his daughter’s imaginary friend are also very funny, incredibly. 

Bonus! (Kindle Single edition)

• “How A Book Is Born,” by Keith Gessen ($1.99)

I didn’t want to be disgusting and pick 5 things by my boyfriend but I wish I could assign anyone who thinks he or she might someday publish a book to read this long examination of how publishing works. The combination of virtue and talent coinciding with luck—the endless variables that combine to make a “literary” bestseller—just boggles the mind. This is stuff that many people who work in publishing or who work in novel-writing either don’t know or don’t allow themselves to consciously know. Buy this as a gift for your friend the corporate lawyer who keeps saying he’s going to take a sabbatical year to “write his novel.” 

• “American Juggalo,” by Kent Russell ($1.99)

Psychic forecast: the year-end Longreads best-of list next year will be everything people are saying right now about John Jeremiah Sullivan, but for the words “John Jeremiah Sullivan” substitute “Kent Russell.”

(photo credit: Stephen Deshler)

Writer Elliott Holt: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Elliott Holt is a Pushcart Prize-winning fiction writer who is almost finished with her first novel. (See her Longreads page here.)

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I love short stories, so I decided my picks should be mostly short fiction. It’s no secret that the likes of The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, One Story and Tin House publish great fiction, but there are also a lot of excellent online literary magazines, so I wanted to include work from a couple of them here. I had to include one story from The New Yorker, though, because Alice Munro is one of my favorite writers.

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Reese Okyong Kwon, “Stations of the Sun” in Kenyon Review 

Alice Munro, “Gravel” in The New Yorker

Nahid Rachlin, “Bijan” in Guernica

Laura van den Berg, “Mansion” in Guernica

Colson Whitehead, “Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia” in Grantland

Photo credit: Rebecca Zeller

Slate's Dan Kois: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Dan Kois is a senior editor at Slate and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. (See his Longreads page here.)

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First of all, I am not even going to bother listing John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Disney World piece because it was obviously the best thing anywhere this year but everyone agrees and has read it anyway. Here is the link just in case. But this doesn’t count as one of my five.

• I thought “The Lost Yankee,” by Bill Pennington in the Times, was really quite extraordinary. The Yankees signed Japanese pitcher Kei Igawa in 2007 to a $46 million, 5-year contract. Then they sent him to the minors after several disappointing outings, where he has pitched ever since, in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, cashing gigantic paychecks and setting minor league records. His contract just expired and I hope someone else gives him a chance.

• My favorite book review of the year was Elaine Blair’s good-hearted, incredibly funny review of Nicholson Baker’s “House of Holes” in the New York Review of Books. Best part: When she advises parents to just sneak a copy to their kids, and soon. “You will have to make sure that they accidentally stumble on it soon, before they find the Internet, if they are to have a fighting chance at being wholesome and delightful fuckers instead of hopelessly depraved ones like yourself.”

• I’m really happy that many outlets (like The A.V. Club, Vulture, and others) now publish long, in-depth interview transcripts, on the grounds that someone out there is interested in them. I particularly loved this Q&A, on Ain’t It Cool News, with Steven Soderbergh, about Contagion but also about ten million other things, like his annoyance when other people’s movies go over budget.

• Any music fan who missed it the first time around should be sure to read Chris Richards’ awesome WaPo story about trying to track down George Clinton’s lost Mothership in the woods of Prince George’s County.

• And I’m pretty sure I did not laugh as long and as hard at anything anyone wrote this year as I did at “Dressing Up My Boyfriend As Marc Anthony In His Terrible Kohl’s Clothes,” by Sarah Miller, in The Awl.

Lapham's Quarterly editor Michelle Legro: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Michelle Legro, longtime Longreader, is an editor at Lapham’s Quarterly.

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“The Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” by Paul Ford (The Morning News)

I doubt there are many people that will remember the December blizzard of 2010 better than Paul Ford, limping through the snow with his wife to their IVF procedure without any form of transportation and only a few hours on the clock to make a baby the new-fashioned way. 

“American Marvel,” by Edith Zimmerman (GQ)

We’ve all been there. Except usually, a movie star isn’t there with you. I had a friend tell me that a fellow writing teacher was using this piece as an example of how NOT to write a celebrity profile. When was the last time I remember reading any kind of celebrity profile? Oh yeah, this time.

“How Carrots Became the New Junk Food,” by Douglas McGray (Fast Company)

First we make the carrots small, then we make them cute, but how do we make them sexy? I love this attempt to make carrots, aka “3D Orange Laser Blasters” into an extreme snack celebrity. 

“Taming the Wild”, by Evan Ratliff (National Geographic)

Sometimes I weigh how much I like a piece with how much it affects my daily life. In this case, I spent a good month weighing the pros and cons of moving to a state where it was legal to own a domesticated fox imported from Siberia. Pros: Wildlife snuggles. Cons: Pretty much everything else. 

And finally, the very first best thing I read in 2011:

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

The most incredible, most true, most heisty read of the year. Haven’t read it? There is a bomb around your neck. I am going to force you to go read it right now. 

Featured Longreader: Steve Streza, lead platform developer at Read It Later. See his story picks from Reason Magazine, Ars Technica, The Hollywood Reporter and more on his #longreads page.

[Not single-page]

Levi Aron remained single for the bulk of his twenties, a sign that he was considered by both his family and the neighborhood shadken to be of lesser stock. For companionship, he turned to a group of like-minded Jews, most of them also single men. They called themselves rebels, one friend remembers. They raged against the strictures of the frum, or pious, world and gathered at restaurants and bars around South Brooklyn—their go-to spot was a dimly lit kosher Japanese steakhouse called Fuji Hana. Aron could be a hard person to talk to, by turns aggressively chatty or heavy-­lidded and silent. “His head would just drop down and his face would go blank,” one former friend remembers. “We’d ask him if he was okay, and he’d lean over and show us the scar from the bike accident.” He seemed to have trouble “distinguishing emotional distance,” one acquaintance said. “He could tell you if he knew someone, but he couldn’t tell you who’s a friend, who’s just some guy he barely knows.”

“A Monster Among the ‘Frum’.” — Matthew Shaer, New York Magazine

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