Search Results for: The Nation

Are You Man Enough for the Men’s Rights Movement?

Longreads Pick

Sharlet reports from the first national gathering of a large group of “men’s rights activists,” who are convinced that the male species is being endangered by feminists.

Source: GQ
Published: Feb 25, 2015
Length: 21 minutes (5,403 words)

A Conversation With Writer Colm Tóibín on the ‘Close Imagining’ of Fiction

Jessica Gross | Longreads | February 2015 | 17 minutes (4,283 words)

 

The Irish writer Colm Tóibín has written eight novels, two books of short stories, and multiple works of nonfiction. His latest novel, Nora Webster, follows a widow in 1970s Ireland as she moves through her mourning toward a new life. That book was almost 15 years in the making, and Tóibín’s previous novel, Brooklyn, which centers on an Irish immigrant to the United States, grew out of Nora Webster’s early pages. Both novels—like all of Tóibín’s work—subtly portray their characters’ complex inner lives, the details accruing slowly to finally reveal an indelible portrait. I spoke with Tóibín, who splits his time between Dublin and New York, by phone about the protagonists he’s compelled to write about and how he goes about creating their worlds. Read more…

How Crazy Am I to Think I Know Where That Malaysia Airlines Plane Is?

Longreads Pick

When a science writer and pilot named Jeff Wise was first asked to write about the disappearance of MH370, he had no idea that the plane’s mysterious disappearance would take over his life. Soon, he was appearing as an on-air expert on CNN upwards of six times a day. He found himself unable to let go of his obsession, even after the international hubbub died down. This essay is about what happened next.

Author: Jeff Wise
Published: Feb 23, 2015
Length: 17 minutes (4,320 words)

Extensive Coverage of the Chapel Hill Shooting: Our College Pick

When three students at the University of North Caroline were shot and killed earlier this month, The Daily Tar Heel, UNC’s student newspaper, covered and covered and covered the story. The paper’s reporters were on the scene shortly after the shooting on February 10 and went on to explore every aspect of the story from the victims’ stories to the investigation to larger cultural conversations about the crime. To date, the Daily Tar Heel’s staff has published 20 stories about the shooting. They compiled them all in a topic page, a smart editorial decision that helps their audience, both local and a growing national one, to follow the story. Students run the paper, but they’re running it like a professional should.

Topics: Chapel Hill Shooting

The Daily Tar Heel | February 2015

Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?

Longreads Pick

On living in an age when scientific knowledge about vaccinations and climate change are put into question.

Published: Feb 23, 2015
Length: 13 minutes (3,487 words)

Inside the Advertising Industry: A Reading List

Photo: SenseiAlan

From fashion bloggers to food “fluffers,” it takes a village to make you want to buy stuff. Why do some brands connect with us, while others take us by surprise or make us angry? Here are six stories examining the advertising industry.

1. “Nice to Meat You.” (Adam Kotsko, The New Inquiry, February 2015)

On the creepiness of the Burger King king (you know the one), Freud’s “uncanny,” and more. (This excerpt is a classic example of why I love The New Inquiry.) Read more…

The Art of Authenticity: A Conversation with PostSecret’s Frank Warren

Image courtesy of PostSecret.

Ben Huberman | Longreads | February 2015 | 13 minutes (3,354 words)

For the past ten years Frank Warren has been collecting and publishing other people’s anonymous secrets, sent via postcard, on his blog, PostSecret. The stories behind the postcards span the entire spectrum of human drama, from tales of petty revenge to accounts of abuse and severe depression. This richness of experience — along with the secrets’ visual design, by now a recognizable mishmash of Americana, well-executed kitsch, and ironic arts & crafts creations — has kept the site popular through multiple waves of internet fads. Originally a local mail art project in suburban Maryland, the site has spawned several books, including The World of PostSecret (released in November 2014), as well as a play, a TED talk, and numerous live events. Read more…

Think of This as a Window: Remembering the Life and Work of Maggie Estep

Photo via YouTube

Sari Botton | Longreads | February 2015

 

A year ago this month the world lost an incredible talent. Maggie Estep, a great writer—and before that, slam poet/performance artist—died suddenly, a month shy of 51.

The loss has hit me hard, even though I had been just getting to know Maggie personally. She was someone I’d idolized from the time we were both in our twenties, she a couple of years older than I. I’d see her stomping around the East Village, where I lived, too, in a black dress with fishnets and a combat boots, utterly self-possessed and unconcerned with what you thought of her. Read more…

A Resourceful Woman

Jeff Sharlet | Longreads | February 2015 | 24 minutes (5,994 words)

 

  1. Mary Mazur, 61, set off near midnight to buy her Thanksgiving turkey. She took her plant with her. “He doesn’t like to be left alone,” she later explained. The plant rode in a white cart, Mary in her wheelchair. With only one hand to wheel herself, the other on the cart, she’d push the left wheel forward, switch hands, push the right. Left, right, cursing, until a sweet girl found her, and wheeled her into Crown Fried Chicken. “Do not forget my plant!” she shouted at the girl. I held the door. // “I have a problem with my foot,” she said—the left one, a scabbed stump, purple in the cold. Her slipper wouldn’t stay on. // Mary wore purple. Purple sweats, purple fleece. 30 degrees. “I bet you have a coat,” she said. Not asking, just observing. Measuring the distance. Between us. Between her and her turkey. Miles away. “You’ll freeze,” I said. “I’ll starve,” she said. I offered her chicken. “I have to have my turkey!” Also, a microwave. Her motel didn’t have one. // “Nobody will help you,” she said. “Not even if you’re bleeding from your two eyes.” // Two paramedics from the fire department. Two cops. An ambulance, two EMTs. “I didn’t call you!” she shouted. “I don’t care who called me,” said one of the cops. One of the paramedics put on blue latex gloves. “She won’t go without this—this friggin’ plant,” he said. “You’ll go,” said the cop. “You’re not my husband!” said Mary. The cop laughed. “Thank god,” he said. The whole gang laughed. One of them said maybe her plant was her husband. That made them laugh, too. “I’m not going!” said Mary. “Your plant is going,” said the cop. Mary caved. Stood on one foot. “Don’t touch me!” They lowered her onto the stretcher. “Let me hold it,” she said. “What?” said the EMT. “The plant,” said the cop. He lifted it out of the cart. “Be careful!” she shouted. He smirked but he was. “Thank you,” she rasped, her shouting all gone. Mary Mazur, 61, shrank into the blankets, muttering into the leaves, whispering to her only friend.

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How Anthony Lane Wrote a Book Review Disguised as a Movie Review

Madame Bovary. Image via Wikimedia Commons

So how does the movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, stack up against the book? And what’s in it for non-Jamesians? Well, we lose Ana’s introduction to fellatio, set precariously in a bathtub; in a similar vein, we skip the breakfast that she shares with Christian at an International House of Pancakes. Above all, we are denied James’s personifications, which are so much livelier than her characters: “My sleepy subconscious has a final swipe at me.” “YES! My inner goddess is thrilled.” “NO! my psyche screams.” Couldn’t someone have got Sarah Silverman to play the psyche?

On the other hand, the film, by dint of its simple competence—being largely well acted, not too long, and sombrely photographed, by Seamus McGarvey—has to be better than the novel. It could hardly be worse. No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth. There are poignant moments when the plainest of physical actions is left dangling beyond the reach of her prose: “I slice another piece of venison, holding it against my mouth.” The global appeal of the novel has led some fans to hallow it as a classic, but, with all due respect, it is not to be confused with “Madame Bovary.” Rather, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the kind of book that Madame Bovary would read. Yet we should not begrudge E. L. James her triumph, for she has, in her lumbering fashion, tapped into a truth that often eludes more elegant writers—that eternal disappointment, deep in the human heart, at the failure of our loved ones to acquire their own helipad.

-From New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane’s movie review of 50 Shades of Grey.

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