Reading List: Misunderstood

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from Vice, Buzzfeed, Aeon Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 13, 2013

Gay Talese and ‘Frank Sinatra Has a Cold’

Gay Talese’s classic 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra with annotations from the author:

“The room cracked with the clack of billiard balls. There were about a dozen spectators in the room, most of them young men who were watching Leo Durocher shoot against two other aspiring hustlers who were not very good. This private drinking club has among its membership many actors, directors, writers, models, nearly all of them a good deal younger than Sinatra or Durocher and much more casual in the way they dress for the evening. Many of the young women, their long hair flowing loosely below their shoulders, wore tight, fanny-fitting Jax pants and very expensive sweaters; and a few of the young men wore blue or green velour shirts with high collars and narrow tight pants, and Italian loafers. Do you have a photographic memory?-eg I go over stuff so much, and go over it again and again and again, that I can remember it forever, almost.-gt A couple of years ago, you told Chris Jones, ‘I don’t take notes in front of people.’-eg Right.-gt So what techniques to do you use to remember such a complicated scene or extended dialogue? You’re describing — in great detail — movement, wardrobe and the location of the various parties. This strikes me as something that would be difficult to capture even in real time.-eg Every night, if I don’t sneak notes in during the day going to the bathroom or something — which I do — I go home and before I go to sleep I write down notes from the whole day, what’s in my mind.-gt”

Author: Elon Green
Published: Oct 8, 2013
Length: 97 minutes (24,432 words)

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Author: Editors
Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 12, 2013

The Dallas Morning News vs. JFK

Two years before the president’s assassination, Dallas Morning News publisher Ted Dealey initiated a public showdown with Kennedy during what was supposed to be a friendly luncheon with Texas newspaper publishers. The story is documented in the new book Dallas 1963:

“Dealey can’t stand it. Leaning forward, half out of his seat, he suddenly interrupts Kennedy and speaks forcefully across the elegant dining table:

“‘Isn’t one of the purposes of this meeting to get an expression of grassroots thinking in Texas?’

“Kennedy smiles, perhaps unsure where things are headed, and slowly nods in agreement.

“Dealey abruptly growls: ‘Well … That being the case, I will present the grassroots thinking in Texas as they have been presented to me and as I understand them.’

“The clinking and scraping of silverware against the china comes to a halt. The room is silent, except for the sound of Texas publishers shifting uneasily in their seats.”

Source: Dallas Observer
Published: Oct 12, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,424 words)

Ginger Baker Hates Everything

Awkward, grumpy interview with the legendary Cream drummer:

Are you living in England now? 


Yes. That’s where I am right now. You just phoned me so you know that this is an English phone number.

I know, I just wanted to ask.
Well why ask me questions if you know the answer?”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Oct 12, 2013
Length: 7 minutes (1,800 words)

Afghanistan Undone

CBC reporter Mellissa Fung was kidnapped, stabbed, and thrown down a hole outside Kabul where she spent 28 days in captivity. Five years later, she returned to Afghanistan:

“Back at home after my ordeal, I refused to let my nightmares rise out of the darkness. I took on the cause of wounded soldiers as a personal journalistic mission. I visited almost every Canadian Forces base in the country, reporting on soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injuries or PTSD, or struggling over disputed claims with the Veterans Review and Appeal Board. But I couldn’t shake the guilt that nagged at me. I sought the help of a therapist, who assured me that my anxiety—a sense of something unfinished—was part of my ‘new normal.’ Still, I was haunted by those I had left behind. I had gone to Afghanistan to expose the plight of displaced people, abused women, and orphaned children. Instead, because of my kidnapping, I had become the story.

“All of this left me desperate to go back, even though some of my friends and family thought I was crazy. CBC was reluctant to send me to Afghanistan: what if I was kidnapped again? My inability to return made me feel like a hostage all over again, helpless and powerless. Unable to let it rest, I read articles and books, and set up a Google Alert on anything to do with the country I thought I would never set foot in again. I didn’t realize it then, but I was slowly becoming a stakeholder in the futures of those girls and women.”

Source: Walrus Magazine
Published: Oct 11, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,272 words)

The Hidden War Against Gay Teens

Gay teens in Georgia are being expelled from private Christian schools that are using a local law to raise money in a way that is so shrouded in mystery that the Society of Professional Journalists has awarded the law the Black Hole Award, for “the most heinous violations of the public’s right to know”:

“Now a sweet-faced sophomore with big blue eyes and a wry sense of humor, Tristan, who asks that we not use his real name, tells me this over fried cheese and Buffalo wings at a Chili’s 20 minutes from the midsize Georgia town where he lives. He’s here with two friends, a junior who asks to go by Emily and a senior who lets me use his real name, Jason, because he’ll have graduated before anyone will read this. Though there’s a Chili’s closer to their homes, they’ve requested to meet here because if authorities at their school learned they were gay, they would not just be punished, they would be expelled.

“Many Christian schools in Georgia and across the nation have similar policies, sometimes explicitly written into a pledge that students or their parents must sign when they enroll. At certain schools, a student need not even engage in acts of sexual ‘impurity’; simply identifying as gay or acting in support of a gay friend can lead to dismissal. ‘The Academy reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to refuse admission of an applicant and/or to discontinue enrollment of a student . . . participating in, promoting, supporting or condoning pornography, sexual­ immorality, homosexual activity or bisexual activity; or displaying an inability or resistance to support . . . the qualities and characteristics required of a Biblically based and Christ-like lifestyle,’ reads the ‘Academy/Home Partnering Agreement’ at Providence Christian in Lilburn, Georgia, a school with religious underpinnings very similar to those at the school Tristan attends. ‘No ‘immoral act’ or ‘identifying statements’ concerning fornication, adultery, homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality or pornography will be tolerated,’ warns the Cherokee Christian Schools in Woodstock, Georgia. ‘Such behavior will constitute grounds for expulsion.'”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Oct 10, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,263 words)

Transport: On Leaving New York for Rehab in Minnesota

From Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, a new collection of essays edited by Sari Botton:

“I wouldn’t miss the culture; New York winnows out a lot of mediocrity, but I was only interested in heroin at that moment in time, of which, I admit, New York did have the very best, and it was cheap, too, its price being only ten dollars a unit and my integrity. It probably cost quite a bit of my future as well, but that was something I was clearly not constitutionally capable of taking into consideration. I did not, however, want to be associated with the horrid troops of well-off Caucasian poseurs who were using heroin as an expression of fashionable, expensive anomie while thousands of hardworking people had to deal with it as a blight on their neighborhoods and families. I didn’t particularly care if I died at that point since I was clinically depressed, but the thought of being associated with the whole heroin-chic thing made me wish I had never existed in the first place. That being the case, I got my wealthy Caucasian family to send me to a fashionable, expensive treatment center in Minnesota.”

Source: Seal Press
Published: Oct 10, 2013
Length: 9 minutes (2,409 words)

The Secrets of Jeff Bezos

In an excerpt from his new book The Everything Store, Brad Stone explores how Jeff Bezos turned Amazon into an online retailing giant—and tracks down Bezos’s biological father:

“I found Ted Jorgensen, Jeff Bezos’s biological father, behind the counter of his bike shop in late 2012. I’d considered a number of ways he might react to my unannounced appearance but gave a very low probability to the likelihood of what actually happened: He had no idea what I was talking about. Jorgensen said he didn’t know who Jeff Bezos was and was baffled by my suggestion that he was the father of this famous CEO.

“I mentioned Jacklyn Gise and Jeffrey, the son they had during their brief teenage marriage. The old man’s face flushed with recognition. ‘Is he still alive?’ he asked, not yet fully comprehending.

“‘Your son is one of the most successful men on the planet,’ I told him. I showed him some Internet photographs on my smartphone, and for the first time in 45 years, Jorgensen saw his biological son. His eyes filled with sorrow and disbelief.”

Author: Brad Stone
Source: Businessweek
Published: Oct 10, 2013
Length: 29 minutes (7,280 words)

Death of a Salesman

On the genius of Cal Worthington, the legendary Southern California car dealer and TV pitchman who died Sept. 8 at age 92:

“Worthington’s long-running series of self-produced spots never deviated from a formula. The slender cowboy—six foot four in beaver-skin Stetsons and a custom Nudie suit—always preceded his hyperactive sales pitch with a gambol through the lot of his Dodge dealership, accompanied by an escalating succession of exotic animals. Originally it was an ape, then a tiger, an elephant, a black bear, and, finally, Shamu, the killer whale from SeaWorld—each of which was invariably introduced as Cal’s dog, Spot. Not once did he appear with a canine. The banjo-propelled jingle (set to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”) exhorted listeners to ‘Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal,’ a catchphrase that became the basis for the most infamous mondegreen in Golden State history. To this day, Pussycow remains a nostalgic code word exchanged among Californians who came of age in the era before emissions standards.”

(via The Browser)

Author: Sam Sweet
Published: Oct 10, 2013
Length: 6 minutes (1,553 words)