Tell Me A Story: A Reading List
These four fantastic fiction pieces will take you far away from this perpetual winter.
Naked, Covered in Ram’s Blood, Drinking a Coke, and Feeling Pretty Good
An exploration of the way other cultures treat depression:
And I said, “Oh! What an interesting idea. Well, um, yes, sure. Yeah, absolutely, yes, let’s do that. I’ll have an ndeup.”
“Oh, well, that’s great,” she said. And she gave us some fairly basic instructions, and then we left.
And my translator, the aforementioned then-girlfriend, now ex-wife of my friend, turned to me, and she said, “Are you completely crazy? Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into? You’re crazy. You’re totally crazy, but I’ll help you if you want.”
Oscar Night in Hollywood, 1948
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.
The Murders Before the Marathon
A triple murder investigation led by the FBI is potentially linked to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Clandestine actions by the FBI leave friends and family members linked to the suspect with more questions, and a community is left wondering: Could solving this case have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings?
Anonymous FBI sources gave numerous accounts of Ibragim’s death to the press, managing to be both vague and contradictory. The agency claimed that, just before being shot, Ibragim had been sitting at a table, about to write a statement that would implicate both himself and Tamerlan in the Waltham murders. In some reports, he lunged at an FBI agent with a knife, while others said he used a pole or a broomstick. It was an agonizing development: The FBI claimed he had been killed at precisely the moment he was about to give the answers so many of us had been waiting for.
Whatever occurred in Ibragim’s apartment the night he was shot dead, his death put the FBI on the defensive. The agency quashed the coroner’s report, leading media outlets and the American Civil Liberties Union to call for an independent investigation. On its editorial page, the Globe declared that “the agency’s credibility is on the line” due to its lack of accountability in Ibragim’s death. Ibragim’s father accused the agency of “premeditated murder” and released photos of his son’s bullet-ridden corpse, showing that he’d been shot in the top of the head—even though the FBI contended that one of its agents had fired in self-defense. Instead of providing answers, the FBI’s investigation of Ibragim had turned into a sudden dead end.
The Last, Disposable Action Hero
Hollywood studios are increasingly focusing on creating expensive action movies with less costly unknown actors. For some of these unknowns, it’s a chance to skyrocket into fame, but it’s not that easy:
Hollywood has gotten creative in its hunt for the next big action star. Producers have considered scouting high-school football games. Brett Norensberg, an agent at Gersh, decided to structure a significant part of his practice around recruiting mixed-martial-arts fighters, professional wrestlers and martial artists. His list includes a karate whiz named Leo Howard, the star of Disney XD’s “Kickin’ It.” “He’s just turning 16. He’s almost 6 feet tall, and he’s got an eight-pack. He’s a thicker Keanu Reeves. The sky’s the limit for him.”
These efforts, though, belie a truth about action heroes: Almost any actor, even some of Hollywood’s most scrawny, can be physically transformed for the part if he’s willing to put in the hard work. The studios know this, which is why any inexpensive unknown can be chosen. The cast for “300,” including a post-“Phantom of the Opera” Butler and the relative newcomer Fassbender, were put on a brutal program with Mark Twight, a trainer whose workouts incorporated medicine balls, kettlebells and rings to emphasize the athleticism of the Spartans.
A Faustian Bargain? What It’s Like To Navigate America’s Healthcare System In The 21st Century
When it comes to elective surgery, you can plan for almost everything except the price:
Here’s what happens when you have urethral surgery. You arrive at the hospital in a tracksuit with your mom and your best friend in tow. They give you hugs. An administrator swipes your credit card for an “estimated payment” of $3,200 and change. Then you change into a gown and hairnet, and sit in a small room while various people ask you to verify your name and date of birth. You sign consent forms. The surgeon and his assistant come to tell you that everything’s going to go great. Your mom and friend are permitted one last hug and squeeze of the hand. Finally you’re escorted down the hall, around the corner, and through a door into a very bright room in which a team of people are moving purposefully. You lie on a large metal bed and are promptly covered with blankets. The IV goes in. Suddenly you’re floating. Someone puts a clear plastic mask over your mouth and tells you to take 10 deep breaths. Your skin prickles all over.
The Plot From Solitary
Four men from rival gangs launch a hunger strike protesting the conditions of solitary confinement:
The severity of his isolation meant that as the strike began, Ashker had little idea of what effect it was having or how many other prisoners had decided to join him. It turned out to be the largest coordinated hunger strike in American history. On the first day, 30,000 prisoners across the state refused their meals. Three days in, more than 11,000 still had not eaten. “We had expected hundreds, even thousands,” says Dr. Ricki Barnett, a senior official in the state’s correctional health-care system. “We did not expect tens of thousands.”
From the beginning, even the most basic matters about the strike—what Ashker and the others were after, why so many people joined them, what the strike demonstrated—were opaque, and profoundly disputed. To the prisoners and their supporters, this was a protest against barbaric treatment, and the SHU was both an outrage in itself and a symbol of the arbitrariness and brutality of the prison system across the nation.
Two Perspectives on the Duke University Porn Star: Our College Pick
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick.
An Oral History of ‘Ghostbusters’
The making of a comedy classic, first published in Premiere Magazine:
HAROLD RAMIS: We very quickly came up with a model: Dan was the heart of the Ghostbusters, I was the brains, and Bill was the mouth.
I found my character on the front page of an abstract architectural journal. There was a picture of a guy and an article about his work. I didn’t understand a word, but his image was great. He was wearing a retro three-piece tweed suit, wire-rim glasses, and his hair was standing way up. I thought, “That could be my guy.” I took the name Egon from a Hungarian refugee I went to grammar school with, and Spengler was from [noted historian] Oswald Spengler.
A Question of Mercy
In 1998 a district attorney sent a teenager to prison for murder. Years later, he’s questioning the life sentence:
According to the law, Cole continued, it did not matter that Randy had not fired the gun or had not wished Heather dead. In Texas, the “law of parties” erases the distinction between killers and accomplices, finding that a person can be held criminally responsible for the conduct of another if he participated in the crime. By virtue of the fact that Randy had assisted Curtis, he was guilty of capital murder. “He could stand here all day long and tell you that his intent was not to assist in the commission of this crime, and his actions cry out differently,” Cole insisted. “He’s guilty. He must pay the consequences of his choice.”
The jury agreed, and on August 25, 1998, Randy was convicted of capital murder and handed an automatic life sentence. Cole watched as Randy, then nineteen, was led from the courtroom in handcuffs and leg irons. As the DA gathered the papers at his table, he was relieved that the trial was over. Yet he hardly felt triumphant. “It was not a moment of celebration,” Cole told me. “There was no joy or happiness. I had a deep, deep sense that another young life had been senselessly wasted.”
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