Bettering Myself

[Fiction] A woman struggles to deal with personal problems:

“My classroom was on the first floor, next to the nuns’ lounge. I used their bathroom to puke in the mornings. One nun always dusted the toilet seat with talcum powder. Another nun plugged the sink and filled it with water. I never understood the nuns. One was old and the other was young. The young one talked to me sometimes, asked me what I would do for the long weekend, if I’d see my folks over Christmas, and so forth. The old one looked the other way and twisted her robes in her fists when she saw me coming.”

Published: Apr 1, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,145 words)

My So-Called ‘Post-Feminist’ Life in Arts and Letters

Writer and photojournalist Deborah Copaken Kogan on her career and her experience with gender bias:

“It’s 1999. I sell my first book to Random House, a memoir of my years as a war photographer, for twice my NBC salary. I’m thrilled when I hear this: a new job; self-reliance; the gift of time to do the work I’ve been dreaming of since childhood. The book is sold on the basis of a proposal and a first chapter under the title Newswhore, which is the insult often lobbed at us both externally and from within our own ranks—a way of noting, with a combination of shame and black humor, the vulture-like nature of our livelihood, and a means of reclaiming, as I see it, the word ‘whore,’ since I want to write about sexual and gender politics as well. Random House changes the book’s title to Shutterbabe, which a friend came up with. I beg for Shuttergirl instead, to reclaim at least ‘girl,’ as Lena Dunham would so expertly do years later. Or what about Develop Stop Fix? Anything besides a title with the word ‘babe’ in it. I’m told I have no say in the matter.”

Source: The Nation
Published: Apr 9, 2013
Length: 10 minutes (2,515 words)

Longreads Member Exclusive: Symmetrical Universe, by Alan Lightman

This week’s Member Pick is “Symmetrical Universe,” an essay by physicist Alan Lightman, published in the latest issue of Orion magazine. In it, Lightman explores the wonder of nature and the principles that guide its design—helping to answer questions like why a honeycomb is a hexagon, or why human-created art embraces asymmetry.

Lightman is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of books including Einstein’s Dreams and Mr g: A Novel About the Creation.

Support Longreads—and get more stories like this—by becoming a member for just $3 per month.

Source: Orion Magazine
Published: Mar 1, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,453 words)

Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin’s Post-Scandal Playbook

The disgraced congressman and his wife, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, attempt to piece together their lives and careers after “that fateful tweet”:

“But nearly everyone who cares about Weiner says that pugilistic political persona long ago bled into his personal life and made him ‘hard to take,’ as his brother Jason puts it. ‘I wouldn’t stand for other people saying this about him, but there was definitely a douchiness about him that I just don’t really see anymore.’ His family agrees that the post-scandal Weiner, the diaper-changing Weiner, is far more likable. ‘No one has been harder on him than he has been on himself,’ Jason says. ‘I find that refreshing, because he was always — in his political career, and it was sort of overflowing into his personal life — this completely decisive, “this is the right thing because this is what I’m doing.” It’s like this circular reasoning that was kind of hubristic. He doesn’t have that anymore. The irony is that it could make him a better politician.'”

Published: Apr 10, 2013
Length: 33 minutes (8,383 words)

Interview: Renata Adler

The author on writing nonfiction and fiction, and the current state of criticism:

“BLVR: There has been a lot of talk recently about the rules of criticism. When is it too mean? When is it too nice? The internet makes it so that you’re very much aware of the human you’re writing about—you don’t want to see them in pain. It’s good for the critic’s psychology, but maybe not so great for criticism.

“RA: Well, it used to be one way a young writer made it in New York. He would attack, in a small obscure publication, someone very strong, highly regarded, whom a few people may already have hated. Then the young writer might gain a small following. When he looked for a job, an assignment, and an editor asked, ‘What have you published?’ he could reply, ‘Well, this piece.’ The editor might say, ‘Oh, yeah, that was met with a lot of consternation.’ And a portfolio began. This isn’t the way it goes now. More like a race to join the herd of received ideas and agreement.”

Source: The Believer
Published: Apr 10, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,161 words)

Restorative Justice: One High School’s Path to Reducing Suspensions By Half

A high school in Oakland, Calif. is reducing its numbers of suspensions by embracing new attempts to reach out to students:

“In the 2011-12 school year, African-Americans made up 32 percent of Oakland’s students but 63 percent of the students suspended. In middle schools, principals suspended about 1 out of 3 black boys.

“The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights investigated whether the discipline was discriminatory. Before making a legal finding, OCR collaborated with the district last fall on a five-year voluntary resolution plan to reduce suspensions, expulsions, and the racial disparity.

“‘We have been working really hard to basically move away from a zero-tolerance strategy … [and create a] culture that is about healing from harm and restoring a sense of relationship,’ said Tony Smith, OUSD superintendent, at a press conference announcing the plan. ‘There have been deep and long-term structural reasons … that have excluded and pushed out boys of color, and most often … our African-American boys. The waste of so much human potential is not only unacceptable in Oakland, but across the country.'”

Published: Mar 31, 2013
Length: 9 minutes (2,406 words)

The Divorce From Hell, The Battle For Alimony And Emptied Pockets

A couple’s five-year divorce battle:

“Motion to enforce court orders on sale of property. Motion to modify temporary relief. Amended motion for contempt to enforce order. Motion for protective order and extension of time. Emergency motion to modify temporary primary residence.

“All of these meant Terry and Murielle and their lawyers and their experts would come together in front of the judge, sometimes at a combined cost of $1,250 an hour. She did this, he did that. No, he did this; no, she did that. An endless battle of wills. The pair — through their attorneys — hurled seemingly unrelated and unsubstantiated accusations at each other, all of which entered the permanent public record of the court file.

“Then one day in August 2009 came this: emergency motion for return of the child and to terminate contact.”

Source: Tampa Bay Times
Published: Apr 3, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,234 words)

Can I Get in the Van?

A writer and longtime Black Flag fan hitchhikes to Texas to audition for the band as it searches for a new bass player:

“It dawned on me: Black Flag did not have a bass player. I could be that bass player! I decided right then and there to find out where Ginn was living, hitchhike across the country, and persuade him to let me try out—just as I had attempted to do at 16. I knew all the old songs, and I figured that thumbing it instead of flying or taking a bus would prove to Ginn that I had dedication.

“Ginn, I knew, had for the past few years been based in a small town called Taylor, just outside Austin, Texas. That morning’s New York Post told me that the weather in Austin was presently a rejuvenating and springlike 70 degrees. There was no reason not to go.”

Author: Erick Lyle
Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Apr 9, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,005 words)

Rocketing Into The Grand Canyon’s Great Unknown

In 1983, three whitewater guides attempted a record-breaking speed run down the Colorado River in dangerous waters. Their story is adapted from The Emerald Mile, which will be published in May:

“For Grua, Petschek, and Wren, getting tossed was brutal and blunt. ‘The flip was instantaneous—there was nothing rhythmic or graceful or easy about it at all—it was just boom,’ said Petschek, who was summarily dumped into the river.

“Grua was holding his oars as tight as he could. As the boat toppled, they flew from his hands, and he followed Petschek into the current. But the worst punishment was reserved for Wren.”

Source: Outside
Published: Apr 8, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,159 words)

Death of a Revolutionary

The life and death of pioneering feminist Shulamith Firestone:

“Midway through the service, the feminist author Kate Millett, now seventy-eight, approached the dais, bearing a copy of ‘Airless Spaces’ (1998), the only book that Firestone published after her landmark manifesto, ‘The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution,’ which came out in 1970. Millett read from a chapter entitled ‘Emotional Paralysis,’ in which Firestone wrote of herself in the third person:

She could not read. She could not write. . . . She sometimes recognized on the faces of others joy and ambition and other emotions she could recall having had once, long ago. But her life was ruined, and she had no salvage plan.

“Clearly, something terrible had happened to Firestone, but it was not her despair alone that led Millett to choose this passage. When she finished reading, she said, ‘I think we should remember Shulie, because we are in the same place now.’ It was hard to say which moment the mourners were there to mark: the passing of Firestone or that of a whole generation of feminists who had been unable to thrive in the world they had done so much to create.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Apr 8, 2013
Length: 32 minutes (8,097 words)