Poison Tree

An open letter to Grand Theft Auto IV’s protagonist Niko Bellic about Grand Theft Auto V and video game culture:

“Almost everyone I know who loves video games — myself included — is broken in some fundamental way. With their ceaseless activity and risk-reward compulsion loops, games also soothe broken people. This is not a criticism. Fanatical readers tend to be broken people. The type of person who goes to see four movies a week alone is a broken person. Any medium that allows someone to spend monastic amounts of time by him- or herself, wandering the gloaming of imagination and reality, is doomed to be adored by lost, lonely people. But let’s be honest: Spending the weekend in bed reading the collected works of Joan Didion is doing different things to your mind than spending the weekend on the couch racing cars around Los Santos. Again, not a criticism. The human mind contains enough room for both types of experience. Unfortunately, the mental activity generated by playing games is not much valued by non-gamers; in fact, play is hardly ever valued within American culture, unless it involves a $13 million signing bonus. Solitary play can feel especially shameful, and we gamers have internalized that vaguely masturbatory shame, even those of us who’ve decided that solitary play can be profoundly meaningful. Niko, I’ve thought about this a lot, and internalized residual shame is the best explanation I have to account for the cesspool of negativity that sits stagnating at the center of video-game culture, which right now seems worse than it’s ever been.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Sep 25, 2013
Length: 10 minutes (2,650 words)

College Longreads Pick: ‘Undocumented but Unafraid’ by Yanan Wang, Yale University

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick.

Source: Longreads
Published: Sep 25, 2013

Public Enemies: Social Media Is Fueling Gang Wars in Chicago

Gangs in Chicago have used social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to spread inflammatory messages about rivals and incite violence:

“We naturally associate criminal activity with secrecy, with conspiracies hatched in alleyways or back rooms. Today, though, foolish as it may be in practice, street gangs have adopted a level of transparency that might impress even the most fervent Silicon Valley futurist. Every day on Facebook and Twitter, on Instagram and YouTube, you can find unabashed teens flashing hand signs, brandishing guns, splaying out drugs and wads of cash. If we live in an era of openness, no segment of the population is more surprisingly open than 21st-century gang members, as they simultaneously document and roil the streets of America’s toughest neighborhoods.”

Author: Ben Austen
Source: Wired
Published: Sep 17, 2013
Length: 17 minutes (4,452 words)

How Doug Band Drove a Wedge Through the Clinton Dynasty

How the world of politics works. MacGillis tells the story of Doug Band, who rose up to become one of President Clinton’s most trusted advisers, until his own business interests got in the way:

“Of course, it was only natural that Band would tap his existing network. What is striking is the extent to which Teneo’s business model depends on his relationship with Clinton. Band’s former White House colleague says Teneo is essentially a p.r. firm that is able to charge above-market rates because it persuades executives that Band and the ties he brings are an essential service. ‘If they were paying $25,000 or $40,000 a month for p.r., then $100,000 a month, from the eyes of the CEO, … it’s not going to crush him,’ says the former colleague. (According to The New York Times, Teneo’s monthly fees can be as high as $250,000.) The longtime Clinton associate says that Band’s pitch to clients was that he was ‘able to fly around [with Clinton] and decide who flies around with him. … The whole thing is resting on his access.'”

Published: Sep 24, 2013
Length: 36 minutes (9,007 words)

Our Longreads Member Pick: ‘My Family Tree, in Black and White,’ by Dionne Ford

This week’s Member Pick is “My Family Tree, in Black and White,” a new personal essay by Dionne Ford and More magazine. The below story comes from the magazine’s September issue, which is not yet online. We’d like to thank Ford and More for sharing it with the Longreads Member community.

Read an excerpt here.

Become a Longreads Member to receive the full ebook.

Source: More Magazine
Published: Sep 24, 2013
Length: 10 minutes (2,562 words)

The Man Who Buried His Treasure in a Poem

An art dealer diagnosed with kidney cancer formulates a plan to bury some of his treasure and leave clues to its whereabouts in a self-published book:

“Dal Neitzel is just one of hundreds of people who have contacted Fenn to let him know they’ve been searching for his haul. Before he set out, after poring through historical books and scouring maps, Neitzel, a 65-year-old former TV cameraman, convinced himself the treasure was in the Rio Grande Gorge in New Mexico, close to the border with Colorado. Remarkably, he’d managed to locate a large house on the edge of a steep drop that overlooked a gushing river. Outside that house was a sign that read: “Brown.” He read Fenn’s poem aloud again: ‘Put in below the home of Brown.’ That had to be it.”

Source: The Telegraph
Published: Sep 19, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,214 words)

How A Relationship Brought Me Halfway Around The World And Back Again

The writer on her experience moving halfway around the world for a relationship and a new life:

“I said ‘yes’ to moving but I hadn’t really said “yes” to a location. Because Russell was an urban planner, with experience that was in high demand, he could work almost anywhere. He had been a Peace Corps volunteer and was interested in living abroad again — somewhere English-speaking, he conceded, so I could get a job. He wanted to be close to places to canoe and hike and climb. He wanted to live in a smaller city. Wherever we ended up, it was understood that we would stay there for a year or two before settling down back home in the Midwest. In theory I was on board with all of this, and as he started to look for jobs and then started getting offers, I remained theoretically fine with all of the potential locations; I was in over my head at my own job and barely had time to get coffee in the morning, let alone ruminate on the implications of these very important decisions.”

Author: Ruth Curry
Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Sep 22, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,847 words)

First Chapters: ‘White Oleander,’ by Janet Fitch

This week we’re excited to introduce First Chapters, a new series on Longreads dedicated to sharing your favorite first chapters, nonfiction or fiction, past or present. Our first pick comes from Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick, who has chosen Janet Fitch’s 1999 novel White Oleander. If you want to recommend a First Chapter, let us know and we’ll feature you and your pick: hello@longreads.com.

Source: Longreads
Published: Sep 22, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,708 words)

The Flight from Dallas

Inside Air Force One moments after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963:

2:02 P.M.

“Judge Hughes has been found. She is on her way.

“In the passenger cabin, Stoughton, the White House photographer, approaches Liz Carpenter and Marie Fehmer. He is sweating and ashen. ‘You must go in and tell the president,’ he says, still trying to catch his breath, ‘that this is a history-making moment, and while it seems tasteless, I am here to make a picture if he cares to have it. And I think we should have it.'”

Source: Esquire
Published: Sep 17, 2013
Length: 31 minutes (7,829 words)

Reading List: Fashion Week

New reading list from Emily Perper featuring picks from Utne Reader, The New Inquiry, Refinery 29, and Newsweek.

Source: Longreads
Published: Sep 22, 2013