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Our Longreads Member Pick: My Body Stopped Speaking to Me, by Andrew Corsello

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For this week’s Member Pick, we’re excited to share “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” a personal story from GQ writer and National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello about a near-death experience. The piece was first published in GQ in 1995. Corsello explains:

I was circling the drain in the spring of 1995—convalescent, out of money, literally within days of quitting the business—when David Kamp, a friend from college who’d become a senior editor at GQ, called to ask if I’d be interested in a staff-writing job. ‘You know I’m damaged goods, right?’ I asked. He didn’t, but made things happen anyway. The day I arrived at GQ, David introduced me to the mag’s longtime editor, Art Cooper, an old-school manly man’s man who’d have insisted on christening my arrival with a hard drink or three (even though it was 11:00 a.m.) had David not preempted it. ‘Now, Art,’ David explained as Art took my hand, ‘you can’t take it personally when Andrew declines the drink you’re going to offer him—he’s been told by doctors he can never drink again.’ Art asked why. Over the next 15 minutes, I told him the bizarre story of my near-death from liver failure six months before. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That’s your first piece for the mag!’ At which point I reflexively wondered, ‘But what’s the angle?’ And, answering myself, said, ‘How about, “If I were in an HMO, I’d be dead”’? Before I could finish my next sentence, Cooper said, ‘Nah, just write the story.’ But what about, you know, the health care angle… ‘Huh?’ Cooper said. ‘Forget that. Just…write the story, like you just told it.’ But what about… We went back and forth several more times, with me burping up inane buzz-crap like ‘nut graf’ and ‘policy relevance’ and Cooper saying ‘Write the story.’ Finally, half laughing, half pissed, he growled, ‘Just write the fucking story.’ So I left his office, sat at my new desk, created a new file, sat staring at the screen for several minutes and then realized: The story was already written, and written as well as it ever could be (at least by me), in my journal. Creating this piece, which Kamp edited, was almost entirely a matter of splicing journal entries together.

Even now it amazes and annoys me: that until the moment Art Cooper told me to write the fucking story, it had never even occurred to me to use in my published work the voice in which I had been speaking to myself for years. That is, it hadn’t occurred to me to publish work…in my own voice. How stupid is that? All this is to say that this story, or rather the editorial injunction that birthed it, taught me that a vivid writing voice is less a matter of talent—far less—than license. Dave Kamp’s headline for this piece plays at multiple levels.

Read an excerpt here.

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Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Longreads Member Exclusive: My Body Stopped Speaking to Me, by Andrew Corsello

Longreads Pick

For this week’s Member Pick, we’re excited to share “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” a personal story from GQ writer and National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello about a near-death experience. The piece was first published in GQ in 1995.

Source: GQ
Published: Nov 1, 1995
Length: 25 minutes (6,489 words)

Housebreaking

Longreads Pick

[Fiction, National Magazine Awards finalist] A lapsed Christian Scientist meets a woman escaping her past:

“Seamus lived in Wheaton, Maryland, in the last house on a quiet street that dead-ended at a county park. He’d bought the entire property, including a rental unit out back, at a decent price. This was after the housing market crashed but before people knew how bad it would get—back when he was still a practicing Christian Scientist, still had a job and a girlfriend he’d assumed he would marry. Now, two years later, he was single, faithless, and unemployed. The money his mother had loaned him for a down payment was starting to look more like a gift, as were the checks she’d been sending for the last year to help him cover the mortgage. His life was in disrepair, but for the first time in months he wasn’t thinking about any of that: he was sitting out back on a warm spring day with a woman. Her name was Charity, and she was a stranger.”

Published: May 6, 2013
Length: 48 minutes (12,042 words)

If This Was a Pill, You’d Do Anything To Get It

Longreads Pick

A Medicare experiment is facing possible shutdown, despite its proven effectiveness. The secret? It’s nurses making frequent house calls to those with chronic diseases:

“But Health Quality Partners, with its emphasis on continuous nurse-to-patient contact, did work. Of the 15 programs, four improved patient outcomes without increasing costs. Only HQP improved patient outcomes while cutting costs. So Medicare extended it again and again — now it’s the only program still running under the demo. But Medicare has notified Coburn that it intends to end HQP’s funding in June.

“Medicare’s official explanation is carefully bureaucratic. ‘The authority that CMS had to conduct this specific demonstration, which predated the health care law, did not allow us to make the program permanent and limited our ability to expand it further,’ says Emma Sandoe, a spokeswoman for the Centers on Medicare and Medicaid Services. ‘As we design new models and demonstrations, we are integrating lessons from this experience into those designs.'”

Author: Ezra Klein
Source: Washington Post
Published: Apr 28, 2013
Length: 17 minutes (4,336 words)

Longreads Guest Pick: Meaghan O'Connell on Ted Thompson and the Making of a Novel

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Meaghan O’Connell is the editor-in-chief of meaghano.com:

“I regard novel-writing with a heady combination of awe and dread, so when debut novelist Ted Thompson wrote about his book’s eight (eight!) year journey to completion last week, I opened it in a tab and walked away from my desk immediately. ‘The Evolution of a First Novel’ is as fascinating as it is generous, and takes us along as his book about a retired Connecticut divorcee went from plausible deniability, to short story, to MFA application, to self-doubt, despair, long dog walks, and longer grant applications. The story ends as all real stories should, with an air of peaceful resignation and a book deal. The people mentioned (Thompson most of all, I suppose) seem to be from a bygone literary era, but aren’t—or so we’ll keep hoping. I took from it what is either a reminder, a threat, or a revelation, depending: that people will forgive you when you get in your own way, and make way for you when you get out of it.”

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How the Trailer Park Could Save Us All

Longreads Pick

Manufactured homes in trailer parks could be an affordable way to house a growing number of seniors on a budget:

“Seniors who can live on their own cost the country relatively little—they even contribute to the economy. But those who move into nursing homes start to run up a significant tab—starting at $52,000 a year. People who are isolated and lonely end up in nursing homes sooner. Hence, finding ways to keep people living on their own, socially engaged, healthy, happy, and out of care isn’t just a personal or family goal—it’s a national priority. Among seniors’ living options, there is one we overlook: mobile homes. Time-tested, inhabited by no fewer than three million seniors already, but notoriously underloved, manufactured-homes can provide organic communities and a lifestyle that is healthy, affordable, and green, and not incidentally, fun. But in order to really see their charms, we need to change a mix of bad policies and prejudice.”

Published: Apr 22, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,775 words)

Longreads Guest Pick: Emily Keeler on 'To Err, Divine, so Improvise' and 'Afterlife'

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Today’s guest pick comes from Emily M. Keeler, a writer, critic, and the editor of Little Brother Magazine. She recommends two stories, “To Err, Divine, so Improvise” by Kaitlin Fontana in Hazlitt and “Afterlife” by Chris Wallace in The Paris Review:

“This past week was one of several missteps; headlines and cover lines and tweets let us down even though we already were so low. Breaking news is broken. Steven Saideman put it another way in The Globe and Mail: ‘It is natural that we are impatient and curious, but we must be conscious that false steps may do much damage to innocents along the way.’ Sometimes it’s better to wait for the longreads.

“Here are two things I read while I waited:

“1. On the topic of shortcomings, Kaitlin Fontana has a wonderful three-part essay on Hazlitt this past week, describing the evolution of failure, and it’s eventual adulation, in the public imagination. For the time pressed, I’d jump to the final section—or do it right and space parts one, two, and three out over a few days, give yourself over gradually to your own failures.

“2.  While it’s not fiction—the place I’m most likely to find solace, this essay on self mythology, the interaction between a name and a story, and Big Poppa nonetheless does the trick. After all, one particular Chris Wallace would go so far as to say that ‘Biggie was a fiction—not so farfetched as to court incredulity, but idealized, a romanticization of the writer.’”

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Bionic Hand Fits Young Woman Perfectly, But Does It Suit Her?

Longreads Pick

A young woman tries out a bionic hand after losing her fingers and toes:

“Her dad wonders if the financial burden of the bionic hand is worth it. A left hand device won’t be considered until that’s clear. If the bionic hand’s too hard or awkward to use, will it collect dust on her nightstand? ‘She’s good without it. She’s so independent,’ he said once in the doctor’s office. ‘She does it all on her own.’

“Tisa’s progress depends on her determination, Bauer, the orthotist, tells them. And she has already come so far.”

Source: Tampa Bay Times
Published: Apr 14, 2013
Length: 6 minutes (1,745 words)

Multiplayer Game ‘Eve Online’ Cultivates a Most Devoted Following

Longreads Pick

A visit to Iceland and CCP Games, the company behind the sci-fi video game Eve Online. The game has grown to 500,000 users and $65 million in revenue:

“Economists have written dozens of papers celebrating the sophistication of Eve’s economy and the amazing level of industry among the players, who basically create everything within the game from scratch. ‘It feels like a real economy instead of one rigged by a gaming company,’ says Vili Lehdonvirta, a researcher at the London School of Economics who’s studied virtual games since 2004. ‘Since there’s no legal system, the economy resembles that of a developing nation where people trade based on trust and social relations.’

“The thought of Eve advancing economic teaching provides some measure of comfort for Icelanders who’ve grown to detest the presumed economic whizzes in the real world. Just down the road from the CCP headquarters, the Harpa, a giant glass opera house, glows in different colors at night. It symbolized Iceland’s banking boom. Now it may have to be torn down, because it’s too expensive for the country to maintain. CCP held its most recent Christmas party there.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Apr 19, 2013
Length: 11 minutes (2,872 words)

Ana Montes: The Most Important Spy You’ve Never Heard Of

Longreads Pick

How a U.S. intelligence analyst ended up spying for Cuba for 17 years—all while surrounded by family members who also worked for the FBI:

“Montes must have seemed a godsend. She was a leftist with a soft spot for bullied nations. She was bilingual and had dazzled her DOJ supervisors with her ambition and smarts. But most important, she had top-secret security clearance and was on the inside. ‘I hadn’t thought about actually doing anything until I was propositioned,’ Montes would later admit to investigators. The Cubans, she revealed, ‘tried to appeal to my conviction that what I was doing was right.'”

Author: Jim Popkin
Source: Washington Post
Published: Apr 18, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,016 words)