Longreads Member Exclusive: Contest of Words, by Ben Lerner
This week's Longreads Member pick is "Contest of Words," Ben Lerner's October 2012 essay from Harper's Magazine. Lerner is author of the award-winning 2011 novel Leaving the Atocha Station and three books of poetry: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw and Mean Free Path.
The story comes recommended by Matt O'Rourke, a longtime Longreads community member and creative director for Wieden and Kennedy in Portland (he also runs the Twitter account @fuckyesreading).
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When Brain Damage Unlocks The Genius Within
Brain injuries can result in “acquired savant syndrome,” in which ordinary people develop remarkable skills after suffering head trauma:
“It would be weeks before the full impact of Amato’s head trauma became apparent: 35 percent hearing loss in one ear, headaches, memory loss. But the most dramatic consequence appeared just four days after his accident. Amato awoke hazy after near-continuous sleep and headed over to Sturm’s house. As the two pals sat chatting in Sturm’s makeshift music studio, Amato spotted a cheap electric keyboard.
“Without thinking, he rose from his chair and sat in front of it. He had never played the piano—never had the slightest inclination to. Now his fingers seemed to find the keys by instinct and, to his astonishment, ripple across them. His right hand started low, climbing in lyrical chains of triads, skipping across melodic intervals and arpeggios, landing on the high notes, then starting low again and building back up. His left hand followed close behind, laying down bass, picking out harmony. Amato sped up, slowed down, let pensive tones hang in the air, then resolved them into rich chords as if he had been playing for years. When Amato finally looked up, Sturm’s eyes were filled with tears.”
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
How snack-food company executives help perfect our addiction to junk food—and whether Americans can reverse course on a dangerous diet of salt, sugar and fat:
“The food technicians stopped worrying about inventing new products and instead embraced the industry’s most reliable method for getting consumers to buy more: the line extension. The classic Lay’s potato chips were joined by Salt & Vinegar, Salt & Pepper and Cheddar & Sour Cream. They put out Chili-Cheese-flavored Fritos, and Cheetos were transformed into 21 varieties. Frito-Lay had a formidable research complex near Dallas, where nearly 500 chemists, psychologists and technicians conducted research that cost up to $30 million a year, and the science corps focused intense amounts of resources on questions of crunch, mouth feel and aroma for each of these items. Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.”
The Enigma of Mr. 105
A profile of Aroldis Chapman, a pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds who is known for his 100-mile-an-hour fastballs and his controversial personal life:
“Communist Cuba: Geographically a place that lies as close to Miami as Cincinnati does to Louisville, but in every other sense seems so very far away. Chapman has gone through not just culture shock but culinary shock, linguistic shock, even financial shock. More than that, he’s had to transition from a communist country to a capitalist one. ‘When you don’t have any freedom,’ says Ebro, himself a native of Cuba, ‘and you come to a place with freedom…’ The journalist pauses. ‘Not everyone reacts in a good way.’
“So it makes sense that Chapman might show up late for a game at Triple-A or strike up a relationship with a stripper. It’s a free country, after all. And then there’s Cuba’s other big legacy: From the day Chapman walked out of that hotel in Rotterdam, he has been pursued and preyed upon.”
A Chinese Hacker’s Identity Unmasked
“It’s not a matter of isolated incidents; it’s a continuous invasion.” Dell’s director of malware research attempts to trace a series of attacks back to their source—in this case, China, and a man named Zhang Changhe:
“Up to now, private-sector researchers such as Stewart have had scant success putting faces to the hacks. There have been faint clues left behind—aliases used in domain registrations, old online profiles, or posts on discussion boards that give the odd glimpse of hackers at work—but rarely an identity. Occasionally, though, hackers mess up. Recently, one hacker’s mistakes led a reporter right to his door.”
The Comedian
[Fiction] On a life in stand-up:
“One time on a talk show, before he made the change in his comedy, the comedian was asked why he started telling jokes. He took a sip from his mug and responded that he just wanted some attention. As a child he’d felt unseen. He was a handsome baby (photographs confirm) but his impression was that no one cooed at him or went cross-eyed to make him smile. Common expressions of affection, such as loving glances, approving grins, and hearty that-a-boys, eluded him. His mother told him ‘Hush, now,’ when he came to her with his needs or questions and he frowned and padded off quietly. He received a measly portion of affirmation from grandparents, elderly neighbors, and wizened aunts who never married, folks who were practically in the affirmation-of-children business. In kindergarten, he was downright appalled to find the bullies stingy with noogies and degrading nicknames. The comedian believed that he was unseen, overlooked, and not-perceived to a greater extent than other people were unseen, overlooked, and not-perceived, when in actuality he was overlooked as much as everyone else, he just felt it more keenly. The talk show host asked him what his first joke was. He said he didn’t remember, but he must have liked what happened because he did it again.”
The Prison Problem
An examination of prison policies and rehabilitation programs for criminal offenders that help keep them out of prison and help them transition back into society:
“‘So many pieces have to come together’ to set newly released prisoners on the path to a productive, stable life, says Caroline Burke ’13, a social studies concentrator who is one of Western’s research assistants. ‘If someone isn’t on the right track after the first few weeks, there’s a snowball effect.’
“The few inmates who do reintegrate without much difficulty, who are best positioned to deal with the psychological effects of the transition, have the ‘big three’ in place: they have a job lined up or find one quickly (e.g., through a trade union they previously worked with); they have housing (often with a relative or through a social-service program); and they have access to healthcare and treatment for substance-abuse and mental-health issues as necessary. The most effective reentry programs address these factors, and Western recommends directing more resources their way.”
Resurfaced: Peter Perl’s ‘The Spy Who’s Been Left in the Cold’ (1998)
We’re excited to introduce this new recurring series, in which we work with publishers to dig up notable stories from their archives that were previously unpublished on the web. We’re especially excited to kick this off with The Washington Post.
Today’s piece is “The Spy Who’s Been Left in the Cold,” a 1998 Washington Post Magazine story by Peter Perl, who just announced he’s retiring from the paper after 32 years.
Why Do Gay Porn Stars Kill Themselves?
A porn star reflects on the death of fellow actor Arpad Miklos, and argues that we shouldn’t make assumptions about what effect the industry had on him:
“But others who knew him even less than me flooded twitter, wrote articles, posted to facebook about what had happened. The theories appeared as soon as the news did. It was immediate, like flies to a corpse. Theories arrived before grief, before honor and love and the experience of loss. When a gay porn star dies, instead of an outpouring of grief, what we are usually witness to is a buzzing.
“All of this is to say that not even death can trump many people’s confused and hostile attitudes towards porn and porn performers. That is how deeply injured we are as a society when it comes to sex, sexuality, and love.”
Her Husband’s Hands
[Sci-fi, Fiction] A man comes home from a war transformed:
“Her husband’s hands came home on a Friday. Rebecca had received word of the attack, which had claimed the lives of seven other soldiers in his unit and reduced three others to similar, minimal fractions of themselves: One man missing above the waist, another missing below, a third neatly halved, like a bisected man on display in an anatomy lab.
“The Veteran’s Administration had told her it could have been worse. The notification officer had reminded her of Tatum, the neighbor’s daughter so completely expunged by her own moment under fire that only a strip of skin and muscle remained: A section of her thigh, about the size and shape of a cigarette pack, returned to her parents in a box and now living in their upstairs room, where it made a living proofreading articles on the internet. That’s no life, the notification officer said.”
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